


Seeking Peace

by OpheliasRosemary (RinaRaizel)



Series: To Those Who Seek Peace [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Muteness, OC insert, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), POV First Person, POV Original Character, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 47,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4570395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinaRaizel/pseuds/OpheliasRosemary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the edge of Mizumi no Kuni, a young girl named Heiwa is born unable to speak. The world would expect little of her, but she would change it all the same. OC-insert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost from FF.Net, with edits that I should add to the original, mostly for clarification and foreshadowing. If you're new to this story, then welcome! This story is inspired by fanfiction like Lang Noi's Catch Your Breath or Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine. However, this is definitely a reincarnation with a huge twist and Heiwa is a very strange girl. I hope you enjoy it. Chapters generally stay between 4K to 6K in word length.

Chapter I

* * *

 

I do not claim to be the authority on what human is, but a constant fixture in my life has been the phrase that to ‘Err is Human.’ Before I even turned ten, I discovered that every person you pass is the sum of successes and failures, of mistakes. Some people more than others, as I discovered about myself.

You see, I am the product of many mistakes. My mere existence is one. This sounds rather bitter, does it not? I am not complaining about the mistakes that led to my existence, rather I am grateful as one could be for such a life as mine. Instead, I am relieved at the amount of errors that led to me. For example, take my conception. Product of many mistakes, some from my mother but even more from my father. My father was a man who made many mistakes in his life. His family was quite prone to error, actually. But there was another error in my conception, one that was neither my mother’s nor my father’s.

In truth, I do not know what exactly caused this error. In times where I can relax and give into whimsical thoughts, I attribute this error to some spirit world bureaucrat, neglectful in their duties to make sure a clean soul got sent into a child. Or maybe it was not a mistake and I was meant to be able to know of things I shouldn’t, to have a future in my mind that didn't belong there. That thought frightens me, that my actions were meant. I dislike the idea of actions being scripted, however much I am aware of external forces. I’ve come face to face with gods, both self-proclaimed and true. I've even seen  **TIME** , a frightening, otherworldly thing. 

Nevertheless, I was born with knowledge of years that had not happened yet and of things in the past that happened way before even my mother was born. And perhaps, if my theory about the bureaucrat in the spirit world is correct, that is why my vocal cords are underdeveloped. It is a nicer thought than just admitting that my mother’s prenatal consumption of opiates caused my premature birth and birth defects. I am therefore mute. I have never spoken a word in my entire life.

I don’t shed tears over my inability to speak verbally with others, not in years. In fact, I think I would be a woman of very few words if I did. My face certainly has been chided for the frequent lack of expression that it gives off, and besides that, many are of the opinion that it is a frighting one indeed, but that is another matter entirely. The mistakes I make are generally that it seems I am more apathetic than I truly am.

Back to the theme of mistakes, many people have said that my name was very much a mistake. That my mother should have named me after something cold or hard or, once when such a term applied to me, maybe something about beauty. I disagree with this.

I am named after a wish, a desire, and a concept. Something countless people strive for, died for. I have seen lifeblood shed over this wish, shed some myself. And after living through a war, I can only say that I have personally achieved this wish and it is truly a worthy one.

What an idea!

I do not know if everlasting piece is a child’s dream or a possibility, but peace with one’s own self, one’s own actions, that is achievable but very hard to gain. And I like to think that after many years of reflection, I have found it. As I write this, I am no more than twenty summers, but yet have lived a life well-worth writing down. And because I am unsure of my immediate future, it has occurred to me leave a true record of my life behind, so those to come will be aware of my past, my present, and my concerns for the future.

My name is Uchiha Heiwa, and this the story of how I became the Prophet of Amegakure.

* * *

With strange images and words behind my eyes, I entered this world a sick baby, watching everything with grey eyes that would later darken into coal. I did not cry nor attempt to.

I didn’t grow up in the place I was born, I couldn’t, but I shall explain that in a minute.

My childhood home, as brief as it was, is in the rocky border of Wind and Lakes. The villages of Ame and Suna routinely fight over this small border, so the people on it truly have to change the name of the country they belong to each time a war happens. Regionally, we may be referred to as the 'Land of Dust' or the 'Land of Canyons'. Small skirmishes between the shinobi happen often but we common folk ignored it. There were many ways to die in this world, and getting involved with shinobi happened to lead quickly to the most painful ones.

There was one ‘decent’ town on the border. Saboten, the town I was conceived in.  _Cactus_. Decent by population size, not by anyone’s moral values. The region itself was a ‘rain-shadow’, rocky and dry as the rain that filled up the rest of country fell on the other side of the mountain and not on us. But though dry heat was common, we were nowhere as bad off as the people who lived beyond our canyon, in Kaze no Kuni. There the rocky dry ground turned into harsh desert.

Several days’ travel from Saboten along the border was a tiny hamlet, not even a village, that had been set up on a drying creek bed when the creek still held water. There were maybe seven houses that still had people. Due to the isolation of the settlement, we had neither running water (except in one home) nor electricity. We collected what we could in our wells and survived off the livestock we could spare. My home was a harsh and poor place, filled with people who had lived through too much, but even among such prickly people one could see a sort of comradery.

Some of us also had a sense of humor. It was such a small place that we escaped any census or taxman that would call on us and thus the hamlet had no name. Truthfully, each house and the land I recognized as belonging to the hamlet belonged to the oldest resident of the hamlet, who had bought it all dirt cheap after the Second Shinobi war. The man in question, a man to this day I refer to as my ‘Shishou’, referred to it as the ‘Hovel’ and so we did as well.

The house I grew up in had two bedrooms, one for my mother’s friend and renter of the house, and one for my mother and myself.

We came to live in the Hovel when my mother was thrown out from her brothel and then couldn’t find work in the rest of the _yukaku_ , or the pleasure district, because of me. Brothels were certainly no place for a newborn, especially one that looked like it would need as much care as I. By coincidence, another woman from the yukaku, a prostitute past her prime from a far less classy brothel named Rei, was intent on retiring. Shishou didn’t understand why exactly Rei picked the Hovel to retire of all places, besides the fact it was cheap, but Rei took to living in the Hovel well. Like my mother, she had been born from peasants who worked the land, which is why I guess they took to each other.

My mother accepted and ‘retired’ as well, despite legally being nineteen. Legally I say, because she in fact had me at the age of sixteen, and had begun working her trade at the age of thirteen. She didn’t fully retire; while she still could, she would disappear for periods of a month or two to go back to Saboten and work in the yukaku. She would send money and things to Rei and me, and then return with a cart full of gifts, ready to tell me stories and whisper gossip to Rei.

The Hovel wasn’t the worst place to retire. Two miles away, a field of poppies dotted the countryside which is why I believe my mother moved there. Easy and free access to what she needed, as well a quiet and hidden place to raise me, far from prying eyes. 

I do not know the name of the particular affliction that caused my mother to need the concoction she’d make for herself, or opium when she could get it, but I do know occasionally she would have tremors and her joints wouldn’t move. It was easy to tell my mother was in pain. With such sickly people, Rei wasn’t expecting much of us.

Rei told me that when she first saw me bundled up in my mother’s arms, silent as the grave, she told my mother that I wouldn’t live to see a month. This was, of course, a mistake.

I would never speak a word despite what my mother had hoped, and the doctor she had visited before setting off to the Hovel assured her of this. I was mute and nothing could be done. My mother was upset, she had wished that, unlike her, I would live to the fullest of my potential. Still, she never dissuaded me from trying things despite my inability to speak. My mother was one of those people who believed in thriving despite adversity and in spite of it. Rei was the same.

And it was with these two world-weary woman in a hamlet full of other broken people that I, Heiwa, grew up.

* * *

“Heiwa!  _Teeth_!”                                                            

I am three and reach my hands for my tooth brush and the small bucket of water my mother has procured for me. Kaa-san has a fixation with teeth.

I suppose I should describe my mother. She was not the biggest beauty in the world, but pretty could certainly describe her. What she did have striking about her was her skin. My mother was near translucent in the dark, like I. Think of someone pale and then bleach them and you would have my mother and me. Such looks were generally uncommon in this part of Mizumi no Kuni, especially since my mother was indeed from the rainy region of the country.

With the sun shining often, my mother and I would have our faces dotted with freckles. Sunscreen was not a priority; toothpaste was. Besides her pale skin, my mother’s hair and eyes were dark. Her hair would hang down limply on her shoulders, curling lightly. From far away, and if the freckles were covered with enough makeup, my mother had a noble look about her, as if she was the daughter of some daimyo. It was an impression that was not made to last. My mother trained herself to smile and talk with barely opening her mouth, ashamed of her rotted teeth and the stumps left behind. She holds her sleeve in front of her mouth while eating and forces me to brush twice a day. Rei finds it funny that we can’t afford electricity but my mother stacks up on toothpaste with chemicals in it that will stop the rotting of my teeth.

“I won’t have my daughter face the same kind of fate I have, Rei.” Kaa-san replies to the teasing.

I brush my teeth as told. I was an obedient child, then, reserved and thoughtful. My mother worried little about me running off as there is no one but the Hovel for miles. Still, I explore, curious about the world around me.

Rei chortles and rubs my hair, darker than even my mother’s. Rei was once a true beauty, as she likes to say, but the Rei I grew up with had a sour and puckered face. Rei is tawny, her face all angles and cheekbones. Her hair and eyes are dun-brown and her teeth are in worse condition than my mother’s. She has had her 4 top front teeth removed and when I once wrote her a question asking why, she laughed and said, “For better insertion!”

Growing up with two prostitutes ensured that I was not only not ‘unaware’ about sexual matters, even at a young age, I viewed them as interesting as one views the weather. I still do to this day. However, the full gravity of that statement wouldn’t hit me until I was older.

Today is a special day. Rei is barely literate, unlike my mother, but my mother is one again setting off to bring us money home. It is the old man who owns the Hovel, Kojiro, who will teach me letters and writing so I may actually learn to communicate with others beyond bare hand gestures and the few facial expressions I am able to muster. Rei-san says they don’t work anyways as I am afflicted with something called “resting-bitch-face-syndrome” which I obviously must have gotten from my father.

“You’ll be alright with Kojiro-jii.” My mother says, pulling me into her lap so she can run a comb through my locks. I close my eyes and enjoy the feeling of my scalp being scratched and my mother’s flowery scent. Her lips press on the back of my head as I lean back, calm in my mother’s arms.

“She’ll be fine. That old geezer complained when we decided he’d teach her.” Rei entered a tirade filled with exaggerated hand gestures. “He said he didn’t want to be bothered with no brat and left alone to his peace and quiet. As if Heiwa can be anything but quiet. Or peaceful.” I open my eyes to acknowledge my name being spoken by Rei. Kojiro is a crotchety old man in his late sixties, with red-flecked white hair and a slightly ruddy beard. He is an imposing figure at the weekly meetings we hold at the hamlet, especially when you realize his left leg is wooden.

There are many broken people in the Hovel. Kojiro was just the first.

As the only child in the Hovel, I am looked upon with fondness by most, not because of my muteness, but because I was a precocious three year-old capable of things older children could be and I did errands well and without complaint. When it came to educating me, many people were quite insistent on that it was done properly, as I was the ‘future’ of the settlement. Kojiro was too old to work, despite being very able-bodied, and had obviously received formal education the extent of none of us knew or accurately guessed at, so it was his duty.

Kojiro was a mystery to the Hovel. He had invited several people to buy up the land because he had nothing to do with the empty houses but other than that, it was like he came from the sky. Due to the scars we could glimpse on his body and the wooden leg, it was whispered amongst the hamlet that he was a mercenary, perhaps even a  _ronin_ , though the actual former  _ronin_  in the Hovel would argue against this.

Whatever Kojiro had done before he founded the Hovel, he was no samurai.

Even more mysterious was his house. He didn’t let the hamlet inside, instead going out to the few benches we put in the middle of the hamlet as a common ground when he needed human interaction, no matter how much he swore he didn’t. But he was furious when anyone came near it. And yet, here he was opening the doors to me.

It spoke of how isolated the common folk of the Hovel were that none recognized the fluidity of his movement, so agile for a man past sixty-five summers, or how he would tense at the slightest movement or noise askew. I, at three, had yet to encounter one of his creed so I had no name for those like him. But I watched him eagerly.

I didn’t understand he was watching me right back.

“He also told me to tell you that if she’s an idiot, he’s not dealing with her.”

My mother laughs at this, a soft and airy thing.

“Also something I don’t think Heiwa will have a problem with. Look at her, restless at three.”

I am not squirming in my mother’s grasp, so it makes little sense to me that I am ‘restless’. I do not yet understand it is my hunger for knowledge that my mother is referring to.

We stand up and my mother, despite not feeling that well this morning, takes me by the hand to walk me to Kojiro’s. We are greeted along the way by several neighbors. Despite my mother and Rei’s occupations, they are well-liked by the hamlet. Mostly because everyone knows that if someone spoke “shit” as Rei would say, she’d probably take our shovel and dig them an early grave. 

Kojiro meets us in front of the house, unshaven face looking completely unhappy with this situation. My mother gives her wide, close-lipped smile before ushering me on to him.

“Ohaiyo, Kojiro-san.”

He gives my mother a stack of papers and a bag full of money.

“Purchases and things I need sent in Saboten. You’re going there soon, yes?” He asks gruffly.

My mother nods.

“Kiminori-kun is riding off with his wares tonight and will take me most of the way. I’ll send what you need at first opportunity.” She takes his papers and bows to him, eyeing me. “Take care of my Heiwa, Kojiro-san.”

Kojiro grunts. My mother smiles before waving goodbye at me and leaves. My new teacher turns to look at me and searches my face. He seems not to find whatever he is looking for and limps back to his house.

Kojiro’s house is nowhere as mysterious as I thought it would be. From first glance, it is devoid of personal artifacts. Unlike the personal trinkets that litter my home, Kojiro’s home seems to have little of those. What it does have is scrolls, and drawn ones at that. Scrolls filled with calligraphy are hung up over the house and I can see why I would want to learn to write from Kojiro. It is neater than everyone expected, with Kojiro being an old bachelor. Things look quite orderly.

“Had to loosen my traps so you don’t get slaughtered. You better be grateful, little girl.”

I blink. Traps?

My attention is called away from the strangeness of that statement by a woodcarving in the living room, one that looks quite old. It shows several people surrounding what seems to be a circle and my eyes are immediately drawn to it. Kojiro’s as well, and his gaze hardens.

“I’d tell you not to ask me many questions, but I’m sure you can’t really do that anyway, so just sit down.”

I do as he asks, unsure of how to react to his prickly nature. Kojiro's personality resembles a cactus, or some dry brush. After a moment, he passes me a scroll with figures on it.

“ _Hiragana._ ” He saya.

I nod and look over them.

I have noticed that the people who proclaim wanting to be alone the most are usually the ones most desperate in need of company. Perhaps unnerved by my silence, even as a mute girl, Kojiro would talk even while not specifically instructing me. Mostly about calligraphy.

It became apparent in the first few hours of instruction that not only was this coming easy to me, that I picked up things very quickly. This was not news to me. Rei had last month exclaimed over how nice my stitching had gotten, and how quick. My fingers were far more nimble than those of other three year olds, she had exclaimed. However, being good at things just gave incentive to study me further.

His eyes traced over my features often in those early days. It took me a while to realize he was trying to pry my ancestry from them. At that point, I didn’t particularly who care my father was. I knew I had one but I also knew enough to figure out he was a  _customer_ , and thus had little place in my life. This would change the moment I was thrust into my father’s world, into our family’s path.

“You’re a clever child.” Kojiro told me at the end of the first week. I looked to him and focused my eyes, not responding physically. People repeated that to me often, but it was the first time I had heard that statement meant as a question. My eyes were drawn to what Kojiro was doing. His brush trailed a scroll, drawing a beautiful pattern that was unreadable to me. The ink swirled until there was little scroll to paint, and, knowing I was watching, perhaps anticipating it, he made the scroll glow.

Not many things can make my eyes widen or give me a shocked look on my face. My first encounter with chakra was one of the things that could, and did. The brush strokes glowed orange and then faded back to black. Kojiro’s reddish-brown eyes looked at me, to see if I had any reaction. I was deeply fascinated and gestured so by pointing to scroll and shrugging. I wanted to see what that glowing meant, what it did.

Kojiro chuckled and took the brush, placing it on the scroll. He then touched it once more, causing the brush strokes to glow once more and suddenly the brush disappeared into the scroll, and the scroll rolled itself up. Another touch and it unrolled itself, with the brush appearing back with a poof of smoke.

It took me a minute to analyze what I seen and I fixed Kojiro with a new light in my eyes, with understanding. I knew what he was, even having only heard bedtime stories about people like him. And so I mouthed the words I’d speak if I could.

_“Please teach me.”_

Kojiro must have read my lips because he nodded.

And that is how I became a kunoichi.

* * *

He didn’t fully train me at first. I was, after all, only three and there to learn how to read and write, which I definitely learned how to do on my own time as well as his. But once lessons were finished, and with me lessons were always finished quickly, he would take out books that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades and use the pictures to show me small exercises. He started small, describing what chakra was and how it functioned. But Kojiro was so well versed in chakra and how it worked that his explanations would outdo any others I would hear later in life.

Every afternoon before Rei would come and walk me back home, he’d have me practice controlling it. And that was the third week, because it became apparently I not only had good reserves but had some talent at controlling them.

As the playing card stuck to my forehead, Kojiro paced around his living room, muttering as usual.

“I could tell, see, that you came from shinobi stock. I might even have a hunch or two about what family you come from, with those facial features.”

At my inquisitive look, he elaborated.

“Your mother’s eyes are a dark brown. Your eyes are black. Your hair is darker than hers and it spikes, rather than curls. And the feel of your chakra. You might think your features common, but I’ve seen looks like that of yours’ on the battlefield, and if you happen to be from that wretched clan, your life won’t have a moment of peace.”

It was then that my interest in my father awoke. Kojiro seemed nervous about the subject, muttering “It’s been four years, there’s plenty of chance it happened before...”, but I got nothing straight out of him as to who my father might be.

By the beginning of the second month, my literacy skills were building faster each day and I was able to stick several objects on me with my chakra control. Not only that, but I’d sit around and practice my hiragana drawings while having the cards stick to me, drawing sighs from Kojiro. He tended to observe me working and filled the silence with talk. Perhaps my muteness unnerved him or maybe he realized that even If I could talk I tended to not say much about anything.

“Just my luck, you’re probably a genius.”

I cock my head as if asking a question.

“You know what’s bad about being a genius? Your type doesn’t live long, or lives in such a way that living isn’t worth it. You burn out before twenty, or end up dead because people expect so much of you that end up taking it all in and expecting more from yourself than you can actually handle.”

And then my master sighed, sitting down.

“And you, little genius girl, are going to have to fight to live because once the world figures you out, everyone will be out for your flesh. People stronger than me are going to try their hardest, and not only with kunai but with words. You think you’ll still be here in ten years? I’m sure you’ll be running for your life from some hunter unit somewhere.”

“You’ll end up like me, girl.” He said, staring off.

I looked down, unsure of how to react to my teacher’s ranting. I could tell that something happened to him but the prospect of having a home destroyed felt alien to me. I briefly closed my eyes to picture our house on fire, or rubble in place of the Hovel, but I could only see people doing their jobs as always. The weary faces, some lined with dirt, cracking smiles at our meetings. The way we’d vote every on every major decision. The few times we decided to make music at the meetings. This was all I knew.

Kojiro cracked his knuckles before continuing.

“Can’t decide if it is best thing or the worst thing you’re not blind. On one hand you wouldn’t have to struggle for life, on the other; a blind Uchiha.”

And then it happened. The moment the word ‘Uchiha’ came from his lips, my world descended into a torrent of colors and shapes, ones that completely obscured everything, to the point where I could only see the vision.

_‘Uchiha.’_

_‘But brother, that clan is cursed!’_

_‘To test my capacity...’_

I saw images and sound, strewn together like a film. It would be years before I understood where the images exactly came from, but it felt like I had watched them at some point, though not as a presence in them. Odd. I was puzzled over the significance of this and whether I should try and mention it to Kojiro through writing. But something stopped me inside, and that’s because I knew even at three years old what had just happened to me was not normal, not even by shinobi standards.

I set aside the clips for later analyzing, when Kojiro wasn’t watching my reactions like a hawk and looked up with him with wide eyes.

“How do you write it?” I wrote, referring the word he had written.

“Put a line here, and there you go. Uchiha, clan name.” He took the pen and paper from me and wrote the name out, and with some afterthought added my own.

“Uchiha Heiwa”

My mother had no clan name or surname. Many people would make up their own. It felt strange seeing that name, as I knew that I would be what Rei called ‘a bastard’. But there was something comforting in the idea I had a family, a place beyond the Hovel. I never hoped or wanted, before then, for anything more than the Hovel, nothing more than the comfort of my mother’s arms. But perhaps there was something for me outside the Hovel. It was a nice thought, thinking I’d have family along the way.

_If only I’d known._


	2. II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heiwa's training makes headway while her family argues over her future, all while the outside world seems to have something in store.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clarify, this story is written from Heiwa's perspective because it's actually a draft of a memoir she writes.

Chapter II

* * *

Weeks went by quickly. I spent my time home unbothered by Rei as I looked over kanji and hiragana and sums. Once in a while, Kojiro would slip me a paper on ninjutsu amongst the homework he assigned me, and I would relish it. I soaked up what I learned like a sponge, whether it was the history, told from his point of view of course, or the explanations about fuuinjutsu, which was what the sealing thing he did earlier was called.

He didn’t try to physically train me until my mother came home. I ran out to greet my mother with pen and paper, ready to talk to her for the first time. She was thrilled. Our first conversation consisted of very basic vocabulary, much more basic than what I wanted to use. But it was enough and I will forever treasure the look of pride on my mother’s face as she watched make character after character, focused on talking to her.  

She bought me many things from Saboten, books being the main thing. These I eagerly devoured as my literacy improved. Rei praised my reading, saying I took to it like a fish to water. I was a natural.

It was then that I noticed a bit of apprehension in my mother’s eyes amidst the pride she felt for me. It would happen each time I appeared to do exceptionally well in something, whether running through the hamlet quickly or climbing the few trees we had with ease, or how quick I was at sums when I was taught them.

It pained me because I forever wanted to be the light in my mother’s eyes. There was nothing more that I loved than my gentle, sickly mother. And so I resolved to cling to her as often as I could while she would bring out the pretty things she would wear in the town and her makeup kits, teaching me how to apply it.

“Don’t scrunch your forehead, Heiwa. You don’t want wrinkles.” My mother admonished as she rubbed a white powder into my face. I nod, keeping my forehead smooth for my mother’s work. She had decided in the morning that it would be fun to play dress up with me since I had no classes and got out her beauty sets. Today I was to be a _maiko_ , an apprentice geisha. To say that my mother looked up to geisha, or the few in the Hanamachi district in Saboten, would be an understatement. With the way my mother sold herself, she would try and appear as a refined woman often, something that attracted well-paying customers. But Geisha were the **real deal** , not even prostitutes. My mother comes home telling me stories about how she would watch the _maiko_ perform in the squares, or what beautiful things they wore.

The freedom to be beautiful, that mere company was paid for, without even allowing a touch, my mother wanted most of all. Not all her regular customers necessarily wanted anything carnal from my mother, some were just lonely and wanted company, too afraid to seek it elsewhere. But there was a transaction there, one that my mother just accepted as a fact of life. But not as a fact of mine.

“Heh, you have my widow’s peak.” She giggled, rubbing my face and pinching my cheeks while she had the opportunity. I smiled as best as I could at my mother’s (beautiful) laughing face.

“Pity she’s mute or you could apprentice her to one of the houses.” Rei came in and sat down with us to watch my mother work. If my mother was an artist with a makeup brush, Rei was one with clothes. Being retired from prostitution, Rei now made her trade as a tailor and it was she would sew clothes for us and the rest of the Hovel. I was as fascinated by her abilities as I was by my mother’s. Fortunately, Rei seemed to delight in dressing me as much as my mother liked painting me, so they ended up working together to have me looking like a porcelain doll quite often. I didn’t protest as I like being fussed over in this way as much as I like shinobi lessons.

My mother moves on to my shaping my eyebrow, sighing as she does so.                                                           

“Don’t say that, Rei, she could dance if she learned. And don’t _they_   fantasize over having a quiet, demure woman? Heiwa can be that.” I nod because I certainly can be quiet, though the meaning of demure escapes me.

Rei snorts. “As a wife maybe, but that’s the reason they seek _us_ out. For some passion in their lives. Aa, Heiwa-chan, you up for being a wife? We’ll have to wait till you’re sixteen but if you want the best ring you have to start early.” And then she tossed her hair and cocked her hip, causing my mother’s sleeve to fly to her mouth because she fell into a giggling fit. Rei did some sort of strutting cat walk around the room, sashaying her buttocks.

“Come on, Heiwa-chan, let me teach you all about getting married to a good man. I am such an expert, it is a wonder I am not married myself!” She fluffed up my hair affectionately, before turning a more serious gaze at my mother, who was busy rolling her eyes.

“It’s not too early to plan for her future, Mizuno. Especially with her being mute. She’ll have a tougher time because of it and you know it. She needs something solid and soon. We don’t want her shiftless and aimless like we used to be.” My mother started frowning at that and I went back into her arms as a way to comfort her, careful not to smudge her work. Her hand weaves through my hair instantly and I feel like a cat of some sort and wish I can purr.

“I know, Rei, but I don’t want to part with her. If there was a way I could go to the town to work and live with her at the same time, I would, just so she could go to a school.” Rei shook her head.

“You know as well as I do they won’t take a kid of ours’. I’m sure Kojiro will teach her enough to make sure she could do enough. Look at how she reads those books you bought her! No, what I’m saying is she needs a _trade_. Her stitching is great, give me a couple years and we can bring her to a good tailor and she’ll be set for an apprenticeship. No walking the streets, no uncertainty. A career.”

My mother’s fingers tighten in my hair and I can see that perhaps she dislikes this idea, though it seems quite practical to me. I can’t picture myself sewing in ten or twenty years, however, much like I couldn’t picture the hovel destroyed, or even being a _maiko_. It feels like there’s something else out there for me.

My mother sighs and turns me around, returning back to painting me.

“We’ll figure that out in two years. She has plenty of time to be a child.”

Rei nods and sits down with us to watch as my mother transforms me into a doll-like figure. By the time the sun sets, I am flitting back into the house after running around the Hovel showing off my makeup and the kimono Rei forced me into to see my mother shaking on the floor. Even at three and nine months, I understand that my mother is sick and that the milky poppy tea she drinks makes her feel better, so I carry it over to her as she drops her head on the tatami mat in pain.

A shaking hand took the cup from me.

“Thank you.” She said, spilling the liquid into her mouth. After a few minutes she stops shaking but her eyes are already drowsy from the liquid, as if she is ready to sleep in a moment’s notice. I place a blanket over her body and turn to leave before my mother’s hand grasps mine firmly and pulled me back.

“Heiwa.”

I turn my head to look at my mother.

“Don’t listen. Don’t listen to anyone who says you can’t do something. You can. You can do anything. You deserve more than this and don’t let anyone stop you from doing all that you could. You hear me, Heiwa?”

I mouth a yes to her before kissing her on the cheek. As my mother falls into sleep, I wonder if I am wrong to just want to stay here forever with my family.

* * *

I relay the conversation to Kojiro as best as I can through my limited written vocabulary, causing him to shake his head. He and I sit on a bench in his yard as I slowly go through the old shinobi textbook he had apparently salvaged from the destruction of his country. My fingers trace the circle on the spine, the same as the one in the living room. The textbook’s origins explain much about my mysterious neighbor, but for now he keeps silent about his origins. But as an intuitive child, I feel like he’ll tell me on his own.

“I will never understand women.” He mumbles. I’m not sure what this means, nor am I particularly interested in general statements so I don’t ask like I usually do when I want explanations.

“But I’d rather you not tell your mom about me training you just yet. Let’s see if we can keep this up until you’re six.” I close the book, surprised at the length of the training.

“Why so long?” I write.

“Silly girl,” He says and I bristle inwardly. “Your mother had many reasons for coming here. I’m sure one of them is to hide you in a place no one would look for. At that age, I’ll feel just a tiny bit better actually training you far from here. As it is now, you’re barely out of the cradle.”

I suck my teeth angrily at that.

“And you’re one foot in the grave, Shishou.”

Kojiro seems especially amused at the prospect of dying of old age.

“Ah, brat, I am still so very young. If only you knew. Now come on, you finished those pages I asked you to read, right? We’re doing something different.” And he takes me by the hand and leads me to the back of the house, which faces nothing but empty and dry land for miles. I look up at him curiously.

“Congratulations, little girl. I trust you enough to let you learn wall-walking, the next step in assuring that perhaps on the day I teach you ninjutsu, you don’t screw up horribly. If you were a normal three year-old, I wouldn’t have even bothered, but you’re you, so… Pat yourself on the back and all that.” I don’t pat myself and Kojiro moves on, sweeping his messy grey locks from his face as he does so.

“You see my house girl? You’re going to walk up onto the roof.” I eye him with distaste. I can see trying to use the windows to climb up, but I can’t even reach the windows with my lack of height. I try to convey that I am three to him, but he walks behind me and bends down to touch my shoulder.

“Figure it out, Heiwa. What have you learned so far from me that you can you use?” he says softly. I frown, entering a state of thought as I eye the grey building in front of me. It takes a second, but I realize he is obviously intending that I build on the chakra exercises we have been using.

While the solution is at the tip of my tongue, images come unbidden of what I need to do because I already knew, already saw this. It is not a house they are stepping on, but trees. Large trees that I would have to travel for days to find because fauna of the nature does not grow here. I shake the sight of a pink-haired girl whispering to a blond boy. Whoever these people are, it is not as important as my master’s task at hand.

My legs are too short to just run up as the teenagers in my vision did. Instead I place chakra both on my hands and feet, like I was attempting to do the card sticking exercise again. As I approach the house with my hands ready to place flat against the wall, a trickle of anxiety swells in me. I’m tiny, what would happen if I fall. A tap of the foot reminds me that Kojiro is watching me and I hope he would catch me if I did slip. It seemed unfair to me that if someone like those kids in my memories were learning this at twelve or thirteen, then why I was I expected to do something similar?

Maybe Kojiro was right and apparently being a ‘genius’ sucked. Too much was expected from them. At least I could guarantee that it was unlikely I’d ever expect more from myself than I can handle. I thought that way until I managed to get halfway up the wall using hands and knees. Even lost in thought, it came so easy. Shakily, I pulled away one hand from the wall, channeling the chakra into the knees and soles. I moved my leg inch by inch until it was soundly on the wall. Quickly I let go of my hand and instantly did the same for the other leg, channeling more chakra.

_‘Stick. Stick!’_

I could almost feel myself teeter off the wall with each second that went by as I redoubled my focus on sticking to the wall. My stomach gave a strange lurch and I was sure it was that gravity thing I heard about weighing down on me as I tried to defy it by standing upright horizontally around ten feet in the air.

“Oi, girl! I said the roof, not the second floor!” Kojiro’s voice didn’t have to carry up much higher, tall as he was, but with the progress I made he felt farther away than perhaps four or five feet. My stomach gave another groan at being suspended like this and I inhaled trying to quiet it down. How did ninja do this? How the hell did they stand upside down or do this while running? Wouldn’t the blood rush to their heads? What was it about shinobi that made them superhuman?

I slowly walked my way up the rooftop, finding a place to sit by a chimney. A poof of smoke sounded and I watched in awe as Kojiro appeared, out of smoke and thin air.

“Shunshin.” He said, smiling down at me. “Good girl. I’m glad you were able to get this in one go. You’re really something, Heiwa-chan.” His hands patted hair and I closed my eyes, enjoying the gesture. Kojiro was a prickly person, but there was something so likable about him that I couldn’t help but enjoy his praise as he gave it. His hands wrapped around me and picked me up easily. I clung to his arms as he did the fast-technique again. However, it wasn’t a teleportation technique like I had thought at first, just a very quick movement. I barely even noticed before we were back on the ground but I felt the wind in my hair telling me we had traveled, however briefly.

“Eh, Heiwa-chan? Shake your head if you want to go back studying, nod if you want to see something cool.”

I mustered as much disdain as I could for this question and tried to let it show in my face. Of course I’d want to see something cool. Kojiro’s lightly wrinkled face stretched as he laughed at the look I had just given him.

“Guess you are a kid after all. Hard to tell if you weren’t such a tiny thing. Hold tight.” And we were off again, at a speed I never knew existed. The old man beside me held me tightly as he ran off from the compound. Within minutes we were out of the Hovel and dashing towards the place mother would send Rei and I to pick poppies. I realized he was augmenting his speed with chakra and suddenly all the questions I had asked myself were answered. Chakra. That magical substance that allowed little girls to walk on walls and old men to run a mile in ten minutes. What else could it do? How much could I use?

The landscape was blur as we sped through flower fields and went somewhere I had never explored, feeling it was too far from the house. I hung on to his collar and turned my head behind me as he began jumping off rocks. Past the fields, the landscape got drier and more desolate, becoming more like the other side of the border, Kaze no Kuni. Part of the border itself was marked by the mountain range we lived on ending in cliffs and canyons.

Or that is what Rei told me. I’d never seen these formations for myself until Kojiro and ninja skills had us almost flying over land to see it. We landed on the edge of a cliff, Kojiro setting me down a couple of feet away from danger. I eyed this new space with wonder because it looked like a different world. While the Hovel was a constant reddish- brown and beige, with some foliage occasionally (very few trees) this had even less foliage than that. What it did have was layers and layers of multicolored sharp rock. I crawled a few feet forward to see better and sighed as I realized I couldn’t see all the way down.

Kojiro sat down beside me.

“I know what you’re thinking. Amazing, right? A mighty river ran through here at some point, slowly grinding away rock for thousands of years. I like to come here to gain some perspective.”

Red-orange canyon as far as the eye could see and beyond that. It made me feel so small, not that I had much trouble with that. I took out my paper and pen from my pocket and wrote the feeling down for Kojiro. He took it and read it before handing the paper back to me, nodding his head.

“Of course you feel that way, Heiwa. No matter how powerful shinobi can be, they can never hope to match something like this, something as inhuman as nature and time. If young people ever just stopped and looked at the world around you, at these kinds of feats, there’d be less haste to die in some stupid war. Sights like this canyon make us feel _mortal_.”

“But you are still young…” He added. “You have yet to learn about all that.” I got a strange feeling, akin to getting another vision that made me uncomfortable because I realized I did know what he was explaining, that somehow I knew what mortality was. That line of thought was frightening, so I pursued another question.

”You make it sound like someone tried to make something like this canyon.”  
  


 “There’s a place in Hi no Kuni. A valley and river that was created in the last century by Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, couple of years before I was born. They fought each other and ended up changing the landscape completely. But as marvelous as it was to see the work of the two Kami no Shinobi, it’s nothing like this.”

I was about to agree, for I understood it was a lesson of humility my master was trying to teach me but all of a sudden I felt like I was swimming, no, drowning in memories. The blonde boy from earlier fighting with another boy, pale and black haired. His face. Almost like… That boy turned into a man, and his eyes are red and frightening and so…familiar. He summons a fox and the other boy has turned into a man as well, with long dark hair and so much wood.

I cradle my head in my hands from the intensity of the images. It feels like I am witnessing a battle inside my own mind and it carries me away from my surroundings. Could this be the battle Kojiro was talking about?

_‘Why am I seeing this?’_ I wonder as the wood man stabs the other.

“Heiwa!”

I did not realize I was being poked. I turn to meet Kojiro’s gaze and the old man looks very worried. I relax my face, lowering my eyes so he doesn’t spot the confusion in them. It is a good thing I cannot speak because I feel I would have said something about what I had seen if I could.

“Don’t daydream when someone is talking to you, little girl!” The worry is replaced with anger, causing me to look up. I rather him angry than worried. I scribble once more.

“I am sorry, I was just imagining such a battle.”

He takes the paper and sighs. “I’m sure your imagination won’t do any justice. You want to hear of a real battle, then let me tell you of…”

Kojiro’s stories are thrilling, and I listen with rapt attention as he tells me of the many battles he had fought with his unit back in his country. None of them elicit the same out of body experience as the mention of Senju Hashirama and Uchiha Madara, and for this I am grateful as the experience is quite disorientating.

Kojiro tells me of why he brought me here, besides as a place to tell me war stories. The cliffs, he assures me, are a great place to do training, and now that I took my steps in chakra control, he will begin slowly adjusting my reflexes. Of course, he says, I will be limited because of my age and size, but it is best to begin soon.

And then he tells me what I am going to be doing and my stomach _flips_.

* * *

It was alright at first. First it was just walking with a book on my head that I had to keep from falling off. Then I was to walk with a bucket full of water, something much more challenging than a book. And If I spilled, I failed.

But none of this compared to the rocks. My wonderful master first would teach me reflexes and evasion by throwing balloons filled with water, causing me end up sopping wet and quite displeased. Luckily, the dry heat in the canyon makes sure that I arrive home without any indications I am being pelted with rubber balls filled with water. But the rocks, well, they leave bruises.

He makes sure to pick smooth pebbles, nothing with a sharp edge, but they hurt even though he is throwing with as little force as possible. That thought does nothing for the aches I receive when those blasted pebbles collide with my body, and I wish I could yell at him each time they do. Instead I inwardly yell at myself for not being able to dodge. It is lucky my mother had gone on another trip to the town, otherwise I would have had explaining to do about the callouses and bruises my body has achieved over the past few weeks. Rei, unlike my mother, lets me bath by myself whereas my mother insists on dressing me and bathing me. Thankfully, by the time my mother returns, there’s little less of them because I’m learning not to let them hit me.

It is still grueling for someone my age, but Kojiro tells me this was standard training when he was very, very little and earlier. Back when there were little villages and it was every clan for themselves. I get the feeling no one lived very long if three year olds were expected to be able to dodge projectiles.

My literacy at this point surpasses Rei’s and much of the Hovels’ (none of us were grand folk, except the ronin and Kojiro, probably). It is with pride, then, that I write a long letter to my mother all by myself. She replies with amusement, stating that at first she thought that it had been Kojiro who wrote such an ‘adult’ and formal letter for me, but then she realized that the handwriting was not only different, but that Kojiro would never sound like me in a letter, even if I dictated it. Apparently amused with my writing skills, she showed them to her friends in the district and my nickname is the little princess, since apparently I write like one.

I must admit that the reason why my letters were so formal was because I couldn’t truly tell me my mother what was happening with me, and so I filled them with complex phrases and things that I thought were polite to talk about. I tried to breach the subject once, through asking whether she really felt that apprenticing to a tailor was the best idea for me, but my mother replied that she was holding off on that decision, but did inquire whether I wanted to attend a school as my writing was so advanced perhaps something scholarly could be made of me.

Kojiro snorted at that one and told me to just nod my head while this lasted and wait things out. You don’t choose the ninja life, he once said, but it chooses you. And I was happiest when learning things about the shinobi lifestyle, when discussing chakra, and when watching Kojiro make seals (he refused to teach me sealing until I was older).

But the ninja world was a dangerous place, as I would learn as I was about to turn four. Kojiro and I were training my reflexes once more, having moved beyond merely dodging pebbles to blocking them with a stick. My short arms could only do so much, so we’d rest repeatedly in the hot summer sun. Kojiro found the idea that he, as a natural redhead, only tanned while I, dark in all but skin, freckled amusing.

We rested for a moment, passing back a flask of water my shishou had brought when our little sessions were intruded upon. A man- no, teenage boy jumped up from another cliff, landing in front of us with his hand on his hip. I grew curious as the man was obviously a ninja, but unlike Kojiro, he was wearing a flak vest of some sort, beige in coloring. His hair was wrapped in a blue bandana.

I noticed a thirsty look in his eyes as he eyed the flask in my lap. Kojiro was up on his feet immediately, kunai in hand. I didn’t even know he carried one. It glinted in the sun, a shining promise of harm to the shinobi youth.

“What the hell do you want?” He spat angrily at the shinobi presumably from Suna (beige if from Suna, grey from Ame, Green from Konoha, red from Iwa, and white from Komo was the little song Kojiro had taught me).

The boy laughed, a cruel sound making Kojiro tense even more. I noticed a slight shift as he positioned himself in front of me, something which made me feel grateful. Kojiro would defend me, shield me from danger. With how hands on his training was, I didn’t want think that he’d ever throw me into battle, especially when the opponent was a trained ninja with at least ten years on me.

“Ah, jii-chan, don’t point things you don’t know how to use. Someone might get a little hurt.” He smiled at us both, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which looked more tired than anything.

“You see, Jii-chan, I was just passing by and happened to see someone training a little girl on the border. Looks a little suspicious, don’t it?” He glanced at me, probably to see how quickly he could pass Kojiro to take the flask away. I tightened my grip on it.

“Maybe to you, runt. We’re on our side of the border, you dolt. And I suggest you keep to yours’ unless you want me to call border patrol on you.” threatened Kojiro. The boy gave Kojiro a once over.

“I don’t think so old man. There’s no patrol for days and you’re not wearing anything from a village. Strange, I don’t think I’d run into nukenin training babies. Where’d you steal the toddler from?”

“I’m retired, brat. Now I suggest you go and leave my granddaughter and I alone.” _‘Granddaughter?’_

The boy looked like he didn’t buy it. Grinning he looked at me and shook his head. “Your grankid? Don’t look anything alike to me. Still,” and he addressed me. “Little girl, give me the flask you got there or your grandaddy won’t live to see you grow up.”

Out of nowhere a feeling spiked. It felt focused, determined, and full of _intent._ Then the second it was there – and I realized it was Kojiro’s doing, then the next second the shinobi from Suna was on the floor, with his face being pressed into rock by Kojiro’s non-wooden foot with his arm in a hold.

“Don’t talk to her. Idiot. You could have asked for the damn flask. What are you, a green chunin of some sort? Got separated from your squad?”

The boy mumbled something into the dirt before yelling as Kojiro twisted his arm.

“Fool. You’re not worth the promotion they gave you.” The boy’s groans quieted down eventually and he started glaring angrily at the two of us.

“Now what to do with you?” Kojiro looked at me for a second, but I shook my head and raised the flask. Sending the shinobi back to the desert without water was a death sentence but the Hovel must remained as unknown as possible so none of the residents gets too much attention called on it. Kojiro raised a reddish-grey eyebrow at my offering of the flask and sighed.

“Really? That’s too nice for a dolt like him.”

I made a sign of sighing over that but Kojiro’s free hand beckoned me forward as the foot holding down the kid got tighter.

“Try anything, kid, and I’ll gut you. Come here.”

I walked over to the shinobi. His eyes narrowed as I approached and undid the flask. Kojiro eased his foot off the young man’s face, enough so he could turn it fully towards me as I poured water down on it. He opened his mouth as the droplets fell, swallowing loudly. Once I felt the flask empty, I took it away and Kojiro got off him, kunai still poised to do harm. The teenager got up slowly to his feet, wiping his mouth and looking warily at Kojiro and me. The old man snorted.

“You won’t be able to touch us. Head west along this border and you’ll reach a station in a day.”

“Whatever, old man.” said the shinobi bitterly, flipping Kojiro the middle finger before turning and heading north.

Kojiro place a hand on my shoulder, tense until he saw the last of the boy. And then he heaved a great sigh.

“That was a close call. Let’s wait a bit, don’t want him to come back and follow us to the Hovel. Odd.”

I sent a questioning glance towards him.

“That boy’s flak vest…. Suna doesn’t have the funds to spare to design a new war uniform and that boy was wearing one. I wonder what there are planning. We can’t have another war here, even with that man who dispatched Hanzo leading us.”


	3. III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heiwa turns four.

Chapter III

* * *

When one is a child, one’s world as small as the eye can see. A drawback of writing from memory is when one tries to remember, even with the aid of jutsu, every memory is tinged with the color of today’s thoughts. Even now, as I try to recall the few weeks where my world began to widen beyond my Hovel, something that started with the arrival of the Suna shinobi, my memories offer up details that I as a child would have not noticed or perhaps didn’t even understand. Even a child with a mind like mine, where a past life was only covered up, waiting to be found by the barest of searches. But still a child nonetheless.

As true to Kojiro’s worries, the outside was nowhere as peaceful as the Hovel. At that point my world truly only consisted of the Hovel. Saboten was the edge of the world in my mind back then, with places like Amegakure and Sunagakure barely imaginable. But news started trickling in that marked the map outside as changing. Squads of shinobi from Suna were crossing the border for some reason.

Patrols were stepped up. While the reach of a shinobi village generally extends to its own borders, it was regular protocol for shinobi to be stationed along their countries’ borders. Our part of the border, made of nothing but dry rock, desert, and canyon, was generally neglected by the shinobi from Amegakure, according to Kojiro.

After an afternoon of making me practice somersaults and cartwheels, Kojiro was resuming the old game of ‘throw things at Heiwa that will make her tear up’. I was doing relatively well today, using my new skills to throw a twist on just normal dodging. Of course, there were limits to what I could do as young as I was. But everyone noticed. Training so much in the sun had cause the splotch of freckles on me to grow all over my body. My mother commented that Kojiro must have me running laps because I suddenly became stronger and faster (he also had me chase chickens in his yard).

The dry heat of the canyon in the summer day was subsiding, giving way to a cold night as the sun set behind us. I turned my face to admire the sun’s disappearance in one of the few minutes my teacher had given me to rest before dodging a pebble suddenly thrown at me.

I narrowed my eyes at Kojiro, whose bearded face looked pleased that he caught me off guard. A wheezy snicker is returned as he bounced another pebble off his palm, this time catching it and showing it to me.

“On your guard, Heiwa. That coulda’ been a kunai and I would’ve hadda talk to your mother.”

He leaned back easily and threw the next one with more force than the one that almost got me by surprise. I dodge again, twisting my body as I pirouette to the edge of the cliff we are on. I cock my head now as if to express surprise at the lone projectile thrown my way. It was too easy.

Kojiro’s normally expressive face doesn’t disappoint me. His bearded face scowls but there’s a hint of pride in his russet brown eyes as he shows five more stuck between his fingers. I steel myself to prepare to bend, to force my short limbs into activities that still strained my muscles, but suddenly Kojiro stopped.

“Heiwa, get back here right now.” Kojiro says, a hint of something in his voice that I didn’t recognize. I did immediately, but Kojiro doesn’t do much but stare off into the horizon of the surrounding cliffs. I watched as his fingers flex in and out of a fist. He closes his eyes and raises his hands in a hand sign, exhaling loudly. I didn’t recognize what he was doing and nothing happened, or so it seemed, for a moment.

“Heiwa,” my teacher said, “I cannot leave you here in this place. I need to make my way a few miles northwest of here without my chakra, so you have to climb on my back and not let go.” The strangest part was not that my teacher was not using chakra to get around (his wooden leg was a very complicated thing that used his chakra apparently), but the fact that for once, Kojiro lacked the dialect I’d associated with him.

He, like the other people of the Hovel, had a way of speaking that minced words but drew out sounds. I knew not everyone talked like them because my mother would occasionally practice her dialects, including one she referred to as “rich Amegakure speak” that was different from our usual way of speaking, more drawn out and rich with longer words. Kojiro’s current speech was stranger still, in one sentence he didn’t shorten his words as he usually did. The pronunciation was different enough that I noticed the difference immediately.

He was tenser now, I could see from his muscles, than he ever was with the boy from Suna.

I tugged on the pant leg over his wooden limb as a way of asking if he’d be alright. Instead of answering, he picked me up over his head and placed me on his back. I channeled a bit of chakra to my palms as I gripped his jacket.

“We will not get there quickly, and it will not be the smoothest of rides, but bear with me, girl. There’s deep, deep trouble afoot.”

It look him an hour or so to traverse the cliffs far enough northwest that he stopped and set me down and instructed me to use some rocks as cover. He crouched down beside me, peeking out a little.

“There they are.” Kojiro mumbled to me. I couldn’t exactly understand what he was getting at until I strained my eyes and realized that the sandy ground I saw down at the lower parts of the canyon earlier was _moving_.

My eyes widened and I turned to face Kojiro with fear plainly on my face. Those moving, beige things down there, where they truly what I thought they were? I’d never seen so many men in my life, let alone shinobi.

“A whole regiment of Suna shinobi, dressed to infiltrate.” My shishou whispered to me. “I cannot count them all by sight and I suppressed my chakra because if I could sense them, they can sense me, but if I know my regiments, I can say there are over two hundred men coming into Ame right now.”

Quickly, they crossed the canyons, hopping from cliff to cliff, before disappearing into the dry lands of our area, like beige ants, all in a formation. We watched them for over half an hour as they left the border. I couldn’t help but wonder where the border patrol was. I never met them as the stations were far from one another and the shinobi manning them tended to keep to themselves and far from civilians, but surely something as large as a whole regiment of Suna nin would be noticed?

Annoyed that I left my writing pad near our training spot, I used my finger to try and write the question in the dirt.

“How are they getting in with no trouble from border watchers?”

“They must have gotten permission from Ame to cross into our land without any trouble. But why is the real question.” Kojiro looked down, messing up my characters with his fingers, and when the dirt was smooth again I see that he had written something down as his answer.

“War.”

* * *

“And so my teammate, Daichi, forgot that the mine was set to explode and attempts to do a low grade fire release, the idiot. One second later, all of us were hightailin’ it out of the mine. Daichi was last.” Kojiro said once more in the dialect he always spoke to me in, knocking back another swing of shochu. We were sitting on his porch, watching the chickens squawk amongst each other and chase tumbleweed while the deep summer sun shone on us.

I cocked my head to the right, the symbol between us that he should keep talking.

Kojiro took another long drink of his recently begotten alcohol and I watched as some of dribbled down his white-flecked red beard. 

“He burned his hair clean off for his stupidity. Never grew it back as far I know. Of course, by the time we got to the port, it was too late. The boat had left us behind. We had to sneak back into Uzushiogakure in barrels full of fermented cabbage. Disgusting.”

I wrinkled my nose at this opinion. I loved cabbage, well most vegetables really, and it sounded like a tasty trip to me.

It was the day after he and I watched the Suna shinobi cross into this part of the country. Thankfully they bypassed the Hovel, though Kojiro says he can tell if they’ll come any closer. Sensing is what he calls it, telling me that since the first chunin we saw, he’s been worried about trouble.

It fascinates me that Kojiro, as a sensor, can tell the difference between people with just their chakra, as he explained to me when we got back to the Hovel.

“Civilians and shinobi had different chakra sizes,” He said. “And you can tell what kind of person you have by their chakra signature. Clan members feel similar to one another, also chakra natures, and personality. My sensing has gotten worse with age, but I can still feel from a couple of miles in any direction.”

It didn’t escape me how he looked away when he said that clans felt similar.

It spoke of my youth how I wasn’t terrified of those soldiers and went to sleep with dreams free of the images of war. Kojiro predicted that they would head somewhere else, wage war somewhere else. Perhaps then we would all be plunged into the war stories Kojiro filled my head with, but that seemed such a faraway prospect. In fact, I was only living for tomorrow.

My birthday.

More than that, I knew that today was the day that the mail would come. Packages delivered from Saboten’s mail system took days to get here by cart. So today, hopefully, I’d get presents. I knew my mother and my aunt barely had money but they gave me things and the other neighbors dropped off sweets and little straw dolls last year for my third birthday.

Kojiro noticed my distraction.

“Don’t think I can’t see you bouncing in your seat, girl. Spirits, you’re so little.” I pout at him.

“You act so grown up sometimes that I forget you’re barely outta diapers.” This prompts more pouting from me. My own mother said that I somehow managed to figure out how to properly attempt to go to the bathroom as soon as I could walk and I walked fairly early for a toddler. I didn’t even remember diapers.

Before I could angrily reprimand Kojiro via writing of how talented a toddler I had been, we heard the clambering of wood and the clapping of a horse’s hooves from the only road in the Hovel, one right by Kojiro’s house. The postal cart was finally here.

I flew out of my chair, hopping over the chickens, who squawked loudly and ran everywhere once my feet disturbed their rest. I put the unhappy chicken noises and the loud chuckles of my slightly intoxicated master behind me quickly, not even stopping to open the gate but pushing myself up and over his fence.

I ran like a loon, smile wide on my face, towards the cart. The familiar sight of the portly (unofficial) postal master of our area greeted me, along with his horses and cart. As I approached, he tugged on the reins in his hands, slowing the horses’ trotting to a stop.

“Well, if it isn’t Heiwa-chan? I guess you want the packages that I brought for your household.”

I nod my head and he gestures for me to go around back. But unlike the usual empty back of the cart, I find a woman sitting amidst the packages. She was unfamiliar and all her clothing showed signs of wear and long travel. A hitchhiker or stranded traveler, I think. Not common to these bare and empty lands, and this is the first I meet traveling with the mailman from Saboten. 

Her eyes lit up as she saw me approach.

“My word, look at you little one. And all those freckles!”

I blush, taking this as a compliment about the dots that cover my skin. No one besides my mother and I have them, something that easily physically distinguishes us from the rest of the Hovel. Like I always remember doing since I could carry small things, I make my way to climb to cart and look for some packages, looking for the markings that my mother had always pointed out to me represented her name – or Rei’s. Now that I could read, it was very easy to locate, except this time I was stopped by the aforementioned woman.

An arm blocked my path and I looked up into the face of the startled woman.

“Kiminori-san? Is she supposed to do that?” She sounds unsure as I raise my eyebrows.

A slit opens in the caravan and I could see a flash of the postal master’s face in it.

“She’s could, she’s just getting packages for her ma and friend.”

Immediately after hearing this, I go to get the packages, the woman having pulled back her hand to eye me warily. As I look for the packages, I hear her whisper to the slit.

“Is she alright? She hasn’t made a sound. She simple? Mother drop her on her head or something?”

The question makes me stop in my tracks. _Simple_. I’ve heard that phrase before once, when my mother and Rei were discussing a man in the Hovel, Keichi, who lived with his older brother and would do also all sorts of tasks around the Hovel. He had a rather vacant stare and would speak slowly. I’d see him with play with his cats in the road once, meowing to them. Rei had watched this from the cracks of our window.

“Poor man. Simple with no wits.” I hadn’t understand why it was there, but Rei’s tone was both disapproving and pitying. Simple, then, was a word that when connected with people was in no way good.

I stare at this woman, unsure of what to do. No one has ever basically asked a personal question about me like that while I was in front of them, as if I wasn’t there. The Hovel’s residents knew that it was better not to ask me questions but if needed to be, they would treat me respectfully, as they did my mother or Rei. Of course, being a very young girl, I was used to normal baby talk and people talking to me sweetly. It didn’t demean me, I was little, and I liked compliments.

But that was the first time I can really remember wishing I could speak. My life had been, in the short span of four years, not too marked by the fact I couldn’t produce sound with my throat. Perhaps that was why Mother’s worries and tears over my future flew over my head. I didn’t feel incomplete.

Until that woman called me simple.

I wanted to speak. I wanted words to fly out my mouth and land on her to make her feel my anger that she would dare imply that my mother did something wrong (at this point I had very little understanding of why I was mute), that I couldn’t think and feel like anyone else. I wanted to yell at her as Kojiro yelled commands at me. I wanted her to understand that I was not less than her.

And I wanted the false sadness, the pity, in her eyes to go away.

Anger as a child is a strange thing. Society teaches us to restrain feelings as we grow older, and tantrums are deemed ‘childish’. I had never been a tantrum-thrower, preferring to retreat from whatever angered or saddened me.

But that pity in her eyes was the first time I ever wanted to punch someone. I didn’t even understand that I wanted to until I noticed my fingers had automatically balled into a fist. Shocked by this reaction, I turned my gaze away from the woman and grabbed the packages as quickly as I could and jumped out of the cart, not looking back because I could feel moisture on my eyelashes. I stomped back on the road, ignoring the postal master, marching past Kojiro’s.

“Heiwa?”

My shishou called to me, leaning on his fence. I turned my tear-stained face away. I didn’t want him to see me this angry, this upset. It was too late as he got a glimpse of my face and repeated my name with double the concern. I just kept on walking home, not bothering to turn back as I heard Kojiro’s angry voice fill the air as he started to question the man driving the cart.

I brooded over this feeling of insecurity by myself for a few hours, resisting my mother and Rei’s attempts to cheer me up and tell me that the woman’s (Kojiro had come over to explain and yell a little) opinions didn’t matter. My mother told me that I was intelligent and anyone who spent more than a minute with me could see that. Rei told me everyone in this world is an asshole and you’d faster fall off a cliff than take anyone’s unsolicited opinions seriously. Kojiro just yelled. But I kept to myself, silently, as if I could ever be anything but. The incident with the woman had showed me that there was something I had overlooked in my short lifespan, something I hadn’t really thought about even though it had marked me from birth. 

I couldn’t talk. I would never effortlessly be able to introduce myself to people, never just idly gossip as Rei would, striking conversation easily with neighbors. I would never sing, like Kojiro when he had too much shochu.

Writing was a way I could communicate, but it took twice as long as the conversations that I noticed others have and there was little way to explain how I was feeling. My words could be misread.

I started to wonder why everything was so centered on speaking. Why singers were praised, why my books would describe the lilt in someone’s speech, why no story I had ever read had a girl like me – a girl who couldn’t speak.

Eventually I went to bed with unanswered and unvoiced questions, to wake up as a year older.

* * *

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY HEIWA!”

Our generally shabby kitchen was filled with Rei’s ribbons and yarn as decorations. A sign with my name written in bold, large stylized letters, obviously Kojiro’s handiwork, greeted me as I entered, rubbing sleep off my eyes.

My mother came closer first, putting a lipstick-covered kiss to my cheek and pinning a stray hair behind my ear.

“Happy birthday, sweetheart.”

I looked up to look at my mother, surrogate Aunt, and teacher. I could see the small concern in their eyes leftover from last night’s events. Though my heart still feels heavy I crack a smile for them, hugging my mother and then Rei and Kojiro. A part of me is warmed by the fact Kojiro has now become part of my life and that he was willing to come to our house this early to wish me a happy birthday.

After a nice birthday ‘brunch’ (my mother let me sleep in), the adults sit down and watch me open the presents. Occasionally we are disturbed by a hovel member dropping in to congratulate me and give me birthday sweets.

I notice something strange going on between Rei and my mother as they keep looking at each other as if sharing a secret. Hesitantly, I open the first package, roughly wrapped in leftover brown paper, and see that Rei has made me a very nice dress. I look up to find Rei smirking.

“You’ll need that for later.” Unsure of what she means, since this dress is way too nice to chase Kojiro’s chickens in, which is my usual form of non-book entertainment, I folded it back up neatly, not wanting to damage it.

The next present is books. I could see wear and tear on them, but not much and they all look like books I could curl up and get lost in. I look at my mother fondly, guessing it is her present.

She nods and smiles widely, hiding it immediately with her sleeve.

“Put it away now, dear. You’ll have plenty of time to read it tomorrow.” I blink, feeling that there is definitely something that neither of the women raising me are telling me. I, however, do as I’m told.

Kojiro’s gift is pretty fancy, though I could tell he’s lying to Rei and my mother immediately. He holds up a sack for me.

“Got it from a ninja a couple decades ago who owed me a favor. You can put more stuff in there than it looks like and nothing will get lost. Seein’ as I don’t think I’ll be travelin’ anytime soon, it might be better use to you.”

I take the bag and look at it, recognizing Kojiro’s own sealwork, while my mother and Aunt “ooh’d” and “ahh’d” over the _magical_ bag. Though he has refused to teach me about sealing until I can prove competent with a couple basic ninjutsu, it covers his home so much that I can tell now what is his and what is not. But some of Kojiro’s words strike me as funny in a different light and so I finally bite.

I took out my little notepad and scribbled a note for them.

“Am I going somewhere?”

My mother read the note out loud to the rest of the room and Rei gave out a laugh.

“I knew she was gonna figure out that one.”

My mother seems a little dismayed.

“I was hoping we could play a guessing game with you, Heiwa, but it seems you figured it out anyway. Yes, you are going on a small trip with me for a week. Can you guess where?”

The answer comes easily to me. We have no money to make a long trip anywhere but Saboten and a trip anywhere else would take us more than week. I quickly write the name of the town for them and she claps her hand.

“Very good! We’ll pack tonight and leave with someone tomorrow at sunup.”

The thought of a trip with my mother definitely improved my mood, so much that right by the time Kojiro was ready to take his leave, I was grinning wholeheartedly as followed I him out and walked him to his house. But the moment we got there, my shishou stopped me from leaving.

“Heiwa, I have your real present in here but I couldn’t give it to you in front of your mother.”

This makes me pause in my steps and I immediately come to the conclusion it is more overtly ninja-related than Kojiro can pass off as “something some ninja gave him”. I looked up at him expectantly.

Kojiro goes into his house for a few minutes while I wait in his yard, taking the time to pet some of the newborn chicks cheeping away at my feet. When he returns, it is with a stack of papers.

“Had to go through everything I have for this.” Said Kojiro, handing it to me. I notice the stack of papers are actually connected, forming a pamphlet as I reminded myself, but all the edges were frayed and the papers deeply yellow. The writing on the cover was a little faded, but I could make it out.

 

_ UZUSHIOGAKURE NINJA CORPS GUIDE TO NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION AND STANDARD SEAL LANGUAGE _

 

I held the guide in my hand, unsure of what the title meant. The word ‘verbal’ was one I had never encountered, but I could tell that this was some sort of language. ‘Seals’ were used to make ninjutsu, as Kojiro explained, but I couldn’t exactly tell what this was. I pointed to ‘verbal’, shrugging to show my confusion.

“Verbal?” The old man asked when he saw my gesturing. “Oh, that means talking. This used to be the standard guide to a code our forces used to use in the field to communicate with hand signals and body language. Each country has one and it’s based off a real language in the elemental countries that hearing or speech-impaired people use to communicate.”

I lowered my head, feeling my hands go slack around the paper.                          

“I thought you’d like to talk in a way that you don’t have to write things down.” My teacher sounded sheepish, even a little nervous. I couldn’t fathom why.

Hearing or speech impaired. It sounded so official. Nothing I read had told me that there were people like me, in fact I never considered it, though it made sense that my mother and Rei knew to call me mute. And people like me, we had our own language, one that wasn’t limited to walking around with a notepad. Of course, only people who took the time to learn the language would be able to talk, but it was something.

“I had to brush up on it, but I think I got it down. When you come back, I’ll teach you so we can talk. Together.”

I feel liquid at my eyes again from Kojiro’s words, his gift, just everything. I come closer to him and jump, hugging his middle and burrowing my tearful face into his shirt.

_“Thank you,”_ I repeat in my mind. _“Thank you for doing this for me, for being my teacher. Thank you.”_ Kojiro hugs me back, patting my hair as he does so. When I finally let go, his weathered-looking face has a small smile on it, and I could see a laugh line through the beard.

“There’s something else. Your mother,” he paused, looking unsure of himself. “She may leave you alone for a couple hours in Saboten. I put a paper in the book with an address to a place where you can get somethings I already ordered for your studies. Just write my name down when you go there and give it to the man.” 

I nod and hide the pamphlet under my shirt.

Kojiro coughs and his demeanor changes to the grumpy crotchety old man he usually is.

“Off you go now, girl. Happy Birthday.”

* * *

_That night voices and visions I’ve never heard or seen, but yet did, filled my dreams._

_“Hey, what are you watching?”_

_“Oh, just Naruto again.”_

_“Cool, scooch over – oh wow, old school! Is this pre-chunin exam?”_

_“Yeah.”_

_“Awesome, the good times before all the shippuden BS.”_

**_“Never forget, you are my prey.” A boy with black-rimmed eyes and red hair says._ **

_The sound of footsteps reverberate throughout my dream, but I don’t hear them directly, the same as the last voice. And then I saw, as if through glass, a moving picture of a boy I’ve seen before._

**_“Hold on.” The boy I’ve seen before asks._ **

**_“Why me? Why are you so fixated on me?”_ **

**_“I see in your eyes you know what loneliness is. True loneliness. You understand that is the most painful form of suffering that there is in the world. As I said before, we have the same eyes. Eyes with a hunger for power, full of hate. The same as me. Eyes that seek revenge against those that made you so lonely. Eyes that burn to see them all dead.”_ **

**_The black-haired boy gasps and there’s a flash – people on the ground._ **

**_“It’s all in your eyes.” The redhead finishes._ **

**_“Okay hang on a minute here. So you’re the one called Gaara.” An adult man speaks, cool and drawling._ **

**_“Seems you can read a lot in Sasuke’s eyes. Be careful, you may not be able to read as wel as you think. If there’s something you wanted to say before the final rounds, go ahead and spit it out.” The man says._ **

**_“When we finally fight, it won’t be to advance to the next stage, but solely for survival, one seeking to destroy the other. Only the last one standing will the feel the full value of his existence.”_ **

**_The man quickly cut in._ **

_“You’re not talking about a match; you’re talking about some kind of grudge bout to the death. It’s crazy!”_  


**_The red-haired boy narrowed his eyes at the black-eyed one._ **

**_“Uchiha. In the depths of your soul, it’s what you want too, isn’t it? You want to confirm the value of your existence to know if you’re as powerful as you think you are.”_ **

**_“…” The black-eyed boy just meets his stare, keeping silent. Suddenly, my dream turns fuzzy and I hear something strange. A strange, unpleasant sound like the ruffling of paper._ **

**_“EMU-YREA-NAC-ANRO”_ **

**_“G-I---YR—E______HC”_ **

**_“!A-RO-“_ **

**_“!A-R-L“_ **

* * *

 

I wake.


	4. IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Vacation in Saboten, part one.

**Seeking Peace**

**Chapter IV**

* * *

The mysteries of the dream I had the night before were troubling, but I decided not to voice them, instead focusing on the face of the boy I had seen in them, the one with black hair. I remembered I had seen him before, back when I saw him near some trees with a blonde boy and a girl with hair the color of Rei's rose perfume.

There was something that perplexed me when I woke. His facial features were clear in my mind and if I added freckles, rounded the face and lengthened the hair, it would basically be my face. Not to mention that the red-haired boy with the frightening eyes and voice, he had called the boy Uchiha.

Uchiha.

That was the name Kojiro had given me as my last name, the name I privately called myself in my mind. Uchiha Heiwa. Somewhere there was another Uchiha, perhaps, or I was seeing what had been. Maybe I was just imagining things. But it lit a small spark of hope inside of me that maybe one day I'll meet these Uchiha, these clan members. Clans, according to Kojiro, were actually very large families, so for all I knew, this boy, if real, could be a cousin.

I knew he was a ninja.

During the boring parts of the trip, when I tired from reading, I would imagine future meetings between this cousin and I. I would love to be real shinobi by then and show how proficient I was with seals. Would he be impressed? Would this cousin care about me?

Kojiro was tight-lipped about the Uchiha, but I knew he called them 'wretched', and that white-haired red-striped man from an early vision referred to them as cursed. I could guess that they were probably infamous and strong warriors owing to the man Kojiro mentioned being able to reshape the land. Would this cousin in my dreams be fierce as well? Would the rest of the clan?

Would they like my mother? Would they hate me for not being born to them? For not being able to talk?

* * *

During our travel to Saboten, my mother would talk to me to pass the time, sometimes brushing my hair, or while planning our time in the city.

"We're going to an inn, Heiwa, a place where travelers stay for a little while." She sighed as she spoke, almost dreamily. I leaned into my mother's hold and she wrapped thin arms around me.

"It'll be pretty and near the Flower district too. At noon we can see the maiko perform for tourists. And after we go to the doctor, we'll be able to explore the city together. We can go see a movie, you've never seen one of those. Something bright and colorful. And we'll have ice cream – oh, ice cream! You've never had that either, Heiwa, it tastes like heaven. I'll do your hair in little ribbons to match your new dress and you'll be the prettiest thing anyone's ever seen."

My mother's babbling definitely brightened up the cramped, horse dung-smelling little wagon with stuff boxes arranged around the blankets we slept on, using bags as pillows. Through the slits in the wood, I could see that it was dark outside and the second night since we left the Hovel. My mother pulled us both down to the floor but didn't cover us in blankets, with the dry heat getting worse the closer we got to Saboten.

"You'll love the city, I did when I came from Lake Omi during the war. It was always raining back there and here the sun always shines and bakes the earth. And there's always flowers for such a dry place."

Though often called Ame because most of the country, except our desolate area, was rainy, the actual name of the country I was born in Mizumi no Kuni, the Land of Lakes. But there was one lake that everyone referred to when talking of my country. On the other side of the mountain was the rainy part of the country, with one huge lake down in the valley. Many referred to it is as the Freshwater Sea, or Awaumi, or Omi. On the shores of Lake Omi, villages dotted the countryside, with farmers using the water for their crops like my mother's family did. The land around Omi was fertile, and farmers had been cultivating the land before shinobi started roaming it. And in the center of this huge lake lay Amegakure, the village of Rain, where it rained perpetually. People from the valley, from the lake, were called mizuno in jest and Rei would use this as a nickname for my mother, though my mother's actual name was Suiren.

Rei was from the rocky, dry part of our country with the border of Wind in sight most of her life, as was a great deal of the Hovel. She swore she had a Kaze nomad grandmother, which was why she was tanned and almost beige-haired, but most of the people on this side of Mizumi looked like her. The people of the lake had more variety in hair color and paler skin.

Kojiro's red beard (and remains of red hair) was commonly believed to be indication of deep Kaze roots, since they had frequent redheads, though Kojiro laughed to me and said that he'd never as far been as Saboten and everyone had red hair back on his island home.

When I closed my eyes I could still see the boy with hair the same texture and color as mine.

"… _but I've seen looks like that of yours' on the battlefield."_

I felt fingers running through my slightly damp hair and paused in my musing to give my mother her attention.

"Listen, Heiwa, during our trip..." I cocked my head at my mother's pausing. She looked mildly uncomfortable all of a sudden.

"Well, I'm going to just talk with the lady I used to work for and I rather not bring you with me. It shouldn't take long, so..."

My mother broke off again, looking around rather awkwardly. It struck me that Kojiro had predicted that my mother would leave me alone for a while during our trip, and not in our inn room, strangely enough since I was to be alone in an unfamiliar city, and so I wondered why exactly my mother was to be doing that she looked like she felt so bad about leaving me on my own. Personally, I was eager to explore and visit the store Kojiro had told me to.

I raised my thumb up in our sign for 'ok'. My mother smiled uneasily and pulled me a little closer to her.

"Alright. I'll see if I can leave you in a library or a park." Kaa-san said, sighing to herself.

"Let's sleep now, darling, and you wake, you'll be in Saboten."

* * *

**The boy was running circles around the redheaded one, who retreated into some light brown dome. His black eyes,** _**my black eyes** _ **, melted into crimson. Another second and the sound of a thousand chirping birds filled the stadium, causing gasps as the black-eyed boy raised a fistful of lightening. The lightening grows so loud and overshadows the vision and all I can hear is the chirping of birds as my vision fades to white.**

" _ **-N-H-RVE-E-NA-C"**_

_The strange noise infiltrates my dreams again, this time cutting through the chirping with its ruffling sound. And then those snippets of words whispered to me caress my ears right before everything bleeds into another vision._

_**The redhead boy has turned into something monstrous, something grotesque. His face is warped and snarling, his eyes wild and mismatch. The black-haired boy's skin is dotted with black shapes and he charges, screaming, and flings a fistful of lightening at the boy.** _

" _ **GN-T-R-E-E-N-H"**_

" _ **HEIWA!"**_

" _Heiwa!"_

* * *

"Heiwa!"

I wake up to my mother loudly calling out my name, tugging on sleeve to help rouse me from my rest. I blinked sleepily, still processing the visions I just saw a moment ago. I realized that sunlight is streaming through the cracks in the wood and that we have stopped moving.

"Come on!" She says, dragging me out. We climb out of the cart and I shielded myself from the very bright sunlight that blinded me from seeing what exactly was around me.

Now, given that small children are generally prone to exaggeration and I was still very much a four-year-old, odd as I was, the sight of Saboten was the most awe-inspiring I had ever seen, and still to this day nothing has ever impressed me in regards to cities as Saboten. Coming from a tiny place consisting of dry fields and a mere seven houses, the beige, pagoda-topped buildings and cobblestone streets of Saboten were more impressive than the canyons of Lake and Wind, or of the Suna's army.

My mouth dropped as I spun around to take everything in me. The flowerboxes, the mudbrick and sandstone buildings with pagodas, the huge buzzing of people – I had never ever seen so many people before and they were all so different looking. Then the smell hit me. Besides perfumes and flowers, I could smell cooking meat everywhere and out of the corner of my eye I could see little food stands with meat grilling.

A hand landed on my shoulder and I looked up at my beaming mother.

"Like it?"

I nodded vehemently, which was followed by my stomach growling. My mother threw her head back and laughed, a tinkling sound followed by the shake of her pretty hair.

"And I see someone's hungry. Well, we can probably indulge before we head off to our inn. What do you say?" She winked at me. I nodded and held out my hand for her to take as we grabbed our things and bid our driver goodbye. She led me to the first stand we came upon and I wait patiently for our food, taking the time to observe the people of Saboten.

Another family catches my eye, much larger than my mother and I. Dressed in heavy cloaked and with their faces shielded, I guess from the description that they are _Yuubokumin_ , or part of the nomadic tribes that populate Kaze no Kuni. My mother noticed my curiosity and bent down to whisper in my ear.

"Those are definitely nomads from Wind, Heiwa. They like this part of border as it's really good for trade. They travel place to place, never really settling anywhere. The people of the desert used to be all like that, living in tribes unless they could afford to settle near water, but with the shinobi villages, lots of the old tribes gave up their ways. These people are living a very ancient way of life."

One of the nomads was very short and I could see from his hood falling off that he was a young boy, around my age, playing around with a little ball. He noticed my staring at him and I jerked my head away, embarrassed at being caught observing a stranger.

Thankfully I was saved further embarrassment by my mother handing me a stick of tsukune and then quickly dragging me through the streets. The spiced treat was a perfect complement to the colorful streets of Saboten. My eye started to be drawn to small crowds of people dispersed throughout the square, crowding newspaper stands. They weren't very loud but I could hear lots of talking. As we passed on of these stands, my ears caught a snippet of what they were discussing.

"Konohagakure, yes…"

"That explains the Suna-nin last week."

I tried to hear more, but my mother pulled me along quickly. She led us to a pleasant-looking building in front of a very busy square. There were many signs strung throughout the square, each pointing to a district. The buildings were what my mother pointed to as distinctly Saboten-like building with a tall pagoda painted a faded cornflower color.

"There it is, Heiwa. Where we'll be staying." We entered quickly and felt cool air rush around us as we set in, a feeling I'd never experienced before. The lobby inside was clean and spacious. Nothing looked remotely as worn as it did back in the Hovel. As my mother got closer to a desk with a stern-looking woman sitting behind it, I heard a noise emanating from a device on the desk.

"Back to our report on the Invasion, we have official confirmation from the administration of Konohagakure."

I recognized the device as a radio and began listening to the slightly scratchy sound while my mother was busy paying attention the woman.

"Due to the unprovoked and underhanded actions of the ninja villages Suna and Otogakure with their illegal invasion of Konoha, it is our regret to inform the people of the Leaf Village, citizens of the Land of Fire, and those listening throughout the continent of the murder of Sarutobi Hiruzen, the Third Hokage by Orochimaru, formerly of the Densetsu no Sannin, and now the leader of the Village of Sound in the Land of Rice, and traitor to Konoha."

The woman began shaking her head and sucking her teeth.

"Dreadful, simply dreadful business in Hi no Kuni, isn't it, ma'am? Interrupting a tournament to invade during a peacetime, with civilians in attendance, too! Of course, this is Sunagakure, so such things are expected of shinobi of _that_ village. Not that the Leaves are any better, of course." She added, bitterly.

My mother nervously stared at the radio before slightly nodding.

"Forgive me, I haven't been keeping with current events much, but it does sound awful."

"Oh, yes, you would have been traveling along the border, yes? News hardly ever gets there."

"The advisors' of the late Hokage have produced statements blaming Otogakure and Sunagakure for the invasion and as of yet, most of the invading forces have been repelled and subdued, leading Konohagakure to demand surrender from both villages. Due to the disappearance of the Yondaime Kazekage, Rasa, Sunagakure is expected to order the full retreat of all units still in Hi no Kuni. The two villages attacked yesterday during the Chunin Exams, during the battle between the Yondaime Kazekage's son Gaara of the Sand and Uchiha Sasuke of the Leaf."

My mother gasps loudly, dropping the pen she was writing with. I looked up to see her with an expression I'd never really seen on her face before. I'd seen her in pain before, during one of her fits, but this looked nowhere near that. Her eyes were wide and small and I could see a trickle of sweat trickle down her face, her mouth downcast as she picked up the pen from the ground.

I'd seen similar looks from other people. Kojiro, when looking at the invading shinobi. Rei when my mother fell down and hit her head while doing the washing.

Fear.

My mother was frightened. But the question was, of what?

* * *

"Open your mouth please."

I did as I was told, snapping my mouth open for the strange man in a smooth white coat in front of me. My mother was sitting on the other side of this small examination room, smiling at me. I could see nervousness in her expression, however, but I was unsure if it was due to the doctor examining me or the news we came across a few hours ago. Certainly I noted that the invasion of Konohagakure by shinobi from Sunagakure unnerved her, but maybe it was also due to the radio announcing it was during the fight of the boy, Uchiha Sasuke.

I myself had been pouring over the visions in my head with the news brought by the radio. The redheaded boy with the menacing look in his eyes, yes, that must have been the son of the Kazekage, which according to Kojiro were the leaders of really big ninja villages. Like a daimyo except they were chosen.

The white-haired man in the earlier vision had called my 'cousin' Sasuke, confirmed by the man on the radio. I guess he was a genin-class shinobi then, by the fact he was competing in the Chunin Exams, something Kojiro explained was a way of some villages to get promotions. The shinobi village in our own country, Amegakure, participated in these too. All this confirmed that what I was seeing was real. What I couldn't tell was if I was seeing it before it happened, or after. And the best question: why?

"Has she made any sound?" The doctor said, peering into my mouth with a very small flashlight.

"I'm afraid she still hasn't been able to make a sound since she was born."

"Then my diagnosis of congenital aphonia still stands."

"Then there's no hope, Ueno-sensei?" I shift my eyes towards my mother, whose hands were clenched on her lap. Had she been hoping I'd be able to talk some day?

"I'm sorry, but Heiwa's recurrent laryngeal nerves were malformed from birth. It is remarkable she's not yet shown any problems besides aphonia. In fact, besides being unable to phonate, she's remarkably lucky that respiratory problems have avoided her. However, I'll need to make certain of this." He turned the flash light off and leaned away, reaching for his stethoscope as he did so. I closed my mouth, unsure of breaking his concentration to attempt to ask him about the meaning of all these terms he was saying.

" _And really,"_ I thought to myself as he leaned in again, making me even more uncomfortable with how close everything was. _"The effort I go through to talk to people sometimes isn't worth it when I can just put things aside for later."_

I felt cold metal touch my chest and a hand on my shoulder. The contact with a stranger was a prickly, uneasy feeling to me. I guess I was slightly overwhelmed by how new everything was to me.

Or I just hated doctors.

"Now, breathe." I gulped in air and then exhaled, feeling the stethoscope rise and fall with my chest. We spent a minute like that, the doctor listening to my breathing while I was growing steadily more and more aware that I really didn't like my personal space encroached upon by people I didn't know. I suppose if I had been a less behaved and impulsive child, I would have been fussing.

Finally, he leaned away. I almost breathed a sigh of relief before noticing a curious expression on his face. The doctor turned to my mother.

"Suiren-san, I'm wondering, do you have her do field work?"

I cocked my head in confusion, which was mirrored by mother's expression. She shook her head.

"No, I don't. She helps with some light chores and goes to pick some medicinal herbs for me once in a while with my friend, but nothing else. Is…-Is something the matter, Ueno-sensei?"

I bit my lip, suddenly aware that this line of questioning should make me nervous.

"No, not exactly. I'm just asking because I see that she appears to be fairly active for a child her age. Now, I will admit that most four year-olds are generally prone to lots of physical activity but in examination it looks like it's more a deliberate kind of physical activity."

I willed my face to remain as blank as possible. Besides the bruises and the scrapes from Shishou's training, there weren't supposed to be signs of our little routines, which Shishou said weren't that far from what he or his father had to go through as little kids (I could scarcely imagine such a time). The fact that the 'game' was up terrified me. Imagining the days pass just folding the laundry or attempt to stitch with Rei instead of learning about ninja or running around as a shinobi-in-training felt like torture. Especially after seeing Saboten this morning, it struck me how _boring_ the Hovel was. I loved it, but there was little to do.

My mother gave a shaky smile to the doctor.

"She's always climbing the few trees or chasing the neighbor's chickens? Maybe that could be it. She's a very precocious child, you see, and I wouldn't be surprised if she had worked out some routine for herself, it sounds just like her." She gave a wide, lipless smile that I could see strained her face. Apparently my mother was as nervous about this line of questioning as I was, though I couldn't think of a reason why she would be. It was just one of the many mysteries that the trip had revealed to me. My sweet, gentle mother had secrets.

The doctor wrote something on a pad, and though I craned my neck to see what it was, his handwriting was kind of really ugly and messy, as bad as Rei's, and I gave up trying to decipher just what he was writing.

"Should I stop it?" My mom asked, her voice full of uncertainty.

The doctor looked up from his chicken scratch and shook his head.

"Oh no, it doesn't seem to be doing any harm. You might have a very good athlete on your hands, Suiren-san. Just make sure she doesn't exert herself and if she develops any trouble breathing, you must bring her here to see what has changed with her condition." The tone of his voice made it sound like he was wrapping up our appointment so I slid myself off the examination table-bench thing and plopped to my feet. My mother beckoned me to take her hand and she rose and we both faced the doctor.

"Thank you so much, Ueno-sensei. I'll leave the fee with your receptionist, is that alright?" She asked, her hand gripping my hand tightly. The doctor nodded, gathering his tools before making a motion to leave the room. Just as he was about to, he stopped and turned.

"Oh, and Suiren-san? Please don't take four years to schedule another appointment."

My mother turned red.

* * *

The overbearing uneasiness that had settled over us during the duration of the appointment had cleared once we went through the Saboten streets. I could tell that there was still too much on my mother's mind, particularly when I skipped in front of her or she saw newspaper stands with most of the newspapers carrying the invasion as cover page news.

There was lots on my mind too, but I was also distracted by the newness of everything. The throngs of people, the smells. The way the setting summer sun reflected off the pagodas. It was beautiful. Of course, the streets here were less taken care of than the main ones my mother and I had originally traveled, and the people were not as well-dressed, but it still impressed the heck out of me.

"Don't run too far ahead, Heiwa. We'll miss the turn for the café." My mother said behind me, not at all stern as she lectured me. I turned back to run back to her, but caught one of those rather sad looks she gave me once in a while, like when I was climbing trees and had no trouble. Or when I decided to read an 'adult' book, rather than the picture-filled ones my mother gave me.

My mother took advantage of me pausing to scoop up my hand and keep a tighter grip on me as we walked through the streets.

"Ueno-sensei was right, you are pretty lively for your age." She muttered, before looking down at me. Our eyes met; black and brown.

"Not that I can ask you to settle down. He didn't want to at your age, either." She mumbled. I waited for my mother to elaborate who this 'he' was. Was it my father? Someone else?

It never came as suddenly my mother's name was called out by someone on the other side of the street. I realized that we were walking through another busy square, with large signs pointing to all the connecting district, one of them being the Hanamachi, the flower district, which was the local entertainment district. It was also where the smaller pleasure district, or the Yukaku was located. It was from this direction my mother's name was called.

"Suuuuuuuiren~!" A high-pitched feminine voice called across the square. My mother stopped, startled, and spun around to find the speaker. We didn't have to look long; the speaker herself practically skipped over. The woman seemed familiar to my mother, since I noticed her relaxing.

The speaker was a young woman of my mother's age and almost of the same complexion. She was pretty, but the thing that startled me most was her hair color. I'd never seen (or thought possible) hair of that color, one I'd only seen in fabrics. A rich navy, it lay lank on her yukata. She bounced up to us, smiling from ear to ear.

"Oh, Suiren! You're back! I'm so happy to see you again!" And then she practically grabbed on to my mother's free arm, all but nuzzling her.

"Hey, Amaya." My mother said, sounding slightly exasperated but not uncomfortable. I looked up at the strange navy-haired woman. How did she know my mother?

"Are you working tonight? Why didn't you let us know, we could go out tonight to welcome you back to the district? You should really go talk to Miyu-oba-chan! Waaaaait." And amidst all the questions, the women's eyes finally slid down to me.

"Hey, is that? It is! You came with little Heiwa?" The women jumped up and landed in a crouch to look at me at eye level. My eyes met warm hazel ones, and I blinked, unsure of how to react to her.

"AAAAAAAAAH! She's so cute~!" Amaya straightened herself and smiled at my mother, raising a thumb up.

"Great job, Suiren! There's nothing worthier than contributing to population of cute girls in this world! The world needs cute girls like you, Heiwa-chan." She plopped a hand on my head.

"Amaya, what were you saying about Miyu-oba-san?" asked my mother. Amaya's attention was gained and she launch in explanation of a sort of 'promotion' the establishments of the yukaku had decided to hold. My mother, it seems, had come at a good time for business. Not so much for a family vacation. I could see worry seep into her face as Amaya kept talking, both casting brief glances at me.

"Just go talk to her, Suiren. We could take Heiwa with us, and-"

"No. Heiwa isn't crossing the akasen." My mother said harshly.

The akasen, or red line, was the line that separated the pleasure quarters and red district from the rest of the Hanamachi. A kind of border of 'sin'.

Amaya pouted.

I looked up at mother, and then upwards at the pagodas. Perhaps I could work this into my favor, as I did need to find that store Kojiro slipped me the address of. I could hide whatever was waiting for me there in my bag. However getting out of my mother's grasp was hard, so I had to treat this like a mission.

A real mission any shinobi would undertake. And sometimes that meant subterfuge.

I pulled on my mother's sleeve, pointing to a pagoda roof I knew as belonging to our inn. I gestured to myself and mimed walking back to show that perhaps she could go off with Amaya while I attempted to get back to the inn. My mother began shaking her head.

"No, Heiwa, you can't – you're only four! And, I wanted to go show you that little café before it closes."  
I shrugged and pointed at the sign towards the Hanamachi.

"Ah, come on, Suiren. There's like a hundred four year-olds running around without supervision in this town, the inn's close by, and Heiwa-chan's worth like ten four year-olds, so she should be able to get there herself. Trust in the cute!" Amaya intervened, under lip sticking out and eyes widening at my mother. I decided to copy her and sent pleading eyes at my mother.

My mother's lips twisted.

"Oh, but she can't…Oh, alright. I'll bring food home for us then. But you'll have to go straight to the inn Heiwa. I can't search for you!"

"Yay~! Don't worry, Suiren, we can see the inn from here, right? She's good to go, now let's get to Miyu-oba-san before it's too late!" Amaya started immediately pulling my mother away, the latter looking at me anxiously.

"Oh, you have no idea how much it sucks without you, Suiren. I'm the only _mizuno_ at the ageya amongst all these _dusty_ people, it's really hard."

My mother responded, but I couldn't discern what she said as they disappeared in the road leading to the Hanamachi. I waited a moment before pulling out the slip of paper Kojiro had slipped me and sped off to the road written on the paper, having noticed it earlier. There were even more people out this afternoon and the squares I passed were filled with nomads, though as I got closer to my destination, the number of people got thinner and thinner, along with a noticeable change in the town itself. The sandstone buildings grew less tall, less well-taken care of, and became replaced with mudbrick. The people started looking like the folks back home, in the Hovel.

And I began seeing residents of a different kind. They came, without rebreathers or raincoats that marked the standard uniform. Instead they wore a cream or beige colored suit stitched up and down the middle, making them blend into the walls. They paid me no mind as I passed them, the sun glinting off their forehead protectors, with four long vertical grooves indented into them.

Ame-nin. The first time I ever saw any.

I could see by their faces that the majority were from the lakes and rainy forests of Mizumi no Kuni, or mizuno. Occasionally I'd spot the darker complexion and dusty hair colors of home among them, but I saw hair colors I'd never spotted in my life; vivid blond or hair that looked orange, a deep, muddy green or navy, and the dark chestnut of my mother.

I kept passing more and more of them as I looked for the store Kojiro pointed out to me. They were less impressive than I thought, considering some looked very bothered than the heat. It felt strange that one day, perhaps, I would be part of them. After all, I knew that eventually my mother would try to send to me to Saboten to learn a trade and apprentice to someone. If Kojiro and I kept making progress, perhaps we would break my kunoichi aspirations to her gently soon, so by the time I was six I could go and try to enter the Academy for shinobi in Amegakure. I tried to imagine myself older, attired in that same cream-colored suit, strolling down Saboten with holsters strapped to my leg. At least I'd be able to stand the heat.

Unfortunately my daydream of being a kunoichi were interrupted by the fact I couldn't find the store. I wasn't lost, amazingly, but I just couldn't find it. There was an address but no place to go. Logically, the doorway after the one I was facing should have been the one for the store, but there was no door there. And the next building over skipped over to the next number. I wondered if knocking on the other door would work, but the thought of trying to explain to someone what I was looking for was a bit nerve-racking. The niggling thought that all strangers were like that mean old woman in the caravan had entered my head and never left.

I wondered if I'd still beat mother home to the inn. Considering Amaya was such a chatterbox, it was likely I still had time. Luckily, I noticed a stray dog coming of an alley way in the next building over and decided to see if there was something there, behind the other buildings.

In a plain wall made of mudbrick I could see a tiny opening that looked like it was covered up on the inside. It was pretty sketchy. But, I guess shinobi were.

My fist pounded the wall causing some of the dust to spill off. After a second I heard footsteps and a voice speak through the little slit.

"Password?"

I looked down to the paper I had and rolled my eyes. Figures shishou would forget that I had to say some password. And I was way too short to jump even halfway to the slit.

"Musta' been a dog." I heard the voice say as I tried to figure out how to make him open it. I pounded the door again, longer.

"Alright, alright, I'll open the door! I swear if this is a pran-"

The wall moved to show a balding man around Kojiro's age with faded red whiskers and a stained tank barely covering the man's potbelly.

"Ugh, just a kid! Listen, this ain't no charity, and I don't know how you found this place but-"

I raised the paper to him and he snatched it, eyeing the writing.

"Hey, this is Kojiro's writi-.." He straightened up before looking left and right before walking backwards, motioning for me to follow him. I entered into what seems to be a store room, with many weapons and other curiosities displayed.

The man slid the wall into place and covered up the peephole.

"Sorry about that, kid. All these bleedin' ame-nin swarming Saboten has got me on edge. You ain't a plant, right? Of course not, you're Kojiro's new kid, right? He told me he found a girl with talent out on the border. No offense, you look pretty young to enter this lifestyle." He eyed me suspiciously. I said nothing.

"Oh, and weren't you supposed to be deaf or something? Oh wait, you wouldn't understand, so that's not right, uh, what's the word? Mute, yeah." He snapped his fingers while turning and walking over to a desk covered in scatted paperwork, discarded wrappers, and a mug proclaiming him the world's best Daichi.

"Let's see, Kojiro's orders."

I decided to look at the little store while waiting. I could see scrolls hanging up from the ceiling, one open with a red spiral drawn on it. A sign assured me that all the merchandise was thoroughly vetted and no previous owner was coming back for it. I had made way to look at the maps of palaces and universal lock breakers before the man finally called for me.

"Eh, girl, I got it. Kojiro's stuff shoulda been here by now, but my suppliers are having a little trouble getting me the goods, because of all the trouble in Konoha. Amegakure's paranoid enough as it is, but that invasion yesterday made the brass back in Rain send a whole platoon to secure the border with Suna. This whole region's a big weak spot for those rainy folk, see?"

I frowned, shrugging.

"Can you come back in a couple days? I'm sure to get some of what he wanted, and I'll dig it up from the official stores if I have to. Can't let Kojiro down, yeah?"

I nodded, unsure what to say. The man rose and led me to the secret door.

"Be careful out there. Lots' of tensions and tempers you don't wanna stir up, kid."

I bowed to him and skipped off, not looking back or paying much attention as I rejoined the roads with shinobi walking them. I waited till the amount of shinobi thinned out and then sped off again, chakra in my legs, back to the cluster of pagodas I knew our inn was at, almost knocking down a Sand nomad boy in the process. I must have looked like a blur as I reached the inn and made my way up and began pretending to read.

Not five minutes later, my mother returned, oblivious to what had really transpired. I just smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes for attentive or confused readers:
> 
> Amegakure's country has no official country name, but it does happen to be surrounded by a huge ass lake - so you get Mizumi no Kuni, land of lakes. My world-building will probably always focus on cultural makeup of the Elemental nations, so you get a bit of insight to how Mizumi no Kuni works. The 'dusty' region (a proposed name for this region, if it ever gained independence, would be the Land of Dust) was constantly being warred over for some mineral deposits in the canyons and trade routes. Culturally, it's neither like the people of the wet part of Mizumi no Kuni, nor is it truly like Kaze no Kuni. And because Sand invaded and occupied the region during the Second War, the people of the area ain't too friendly towards Suna-nin.
> 
> Saboten has no exact real life counterpart, but architecturally it would be a cross between the Pagodas of Bagan in Myanmar and the overall look of Kashgar in Western China (along with other Central Asian towns like Bukhara or old school Samarkand). Just an oasis city on the Narutoverse equivalent of the Silk Road.
> 
> Heiwa was born with damaged laryngeal nerves; hence the congenital aphonia. I'm no pre-med student, so please understand I'm generally skimming articles on google scholar and pulling crap out of nowhere.
> 
> An ageya was a place where (mostly high class) prostitutes would meet clients, a kind of selection place. The Narutoverse can be so modern and yet so not, so i have little idea what the sex industry would be like, but I'm incorporating parts from the Edo period of Japan and modern day stuff. So, it's run by a yarite but unlike the Edo period, the sex industry in Saboten isn't as rigidly class-fixated. I really wanna write drabbles of how Rei and Suiren met now, along with how Suiren met Heiwa's dad.
> 
> So, is this story ever going to stop being so slice of life? Is Amaya on happy pills and does anyone else think she'd be a good ship for Gai, or just me? And is there a cabal of old Uzumaki men who run sketchy black market shinobi supply stores and train little girls to be killers in the middle of nowhere? You will probably find out in the next chapter! Or you could review and hit me up on my fanfiction tumblr @baezetsu


	5. V

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heiwa makes a new friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays! And as a belated Channukah gift, you get a second chapter in a couple days, yup - a whole new chapter. expect it Saturday morning. 
> 
> Warning, this chapter contains violence and mentions of drug abuse.

There’s nothing sweeter than spending time with your loved ones. Okay, perhaps I can admit that ice cream is sweeter, or going to a café and seeing the cook make teddy bear-shaped pancakes for you, or the little doll your sweet mother bought you in a store may come close, but the taste of sugary confections soon fades from your mouth and dolls disappear into the crevices of homes, leaving nothing but saccharine memories.

I made plenty of good memories in Saboten.

Whatever strange mood overtook my mother the day before, it was wiped out with the new day. We got up early to explore as my mother needed the afternoon to herself for some ‘business’ and was to leave me at the library. I must admit I was looking forward to the library as much to rest of the trip, having never set foot in one. A place with free books? And ones a sight more interesting than Kojiro’s, who nary had a book that was not on complex seal theory, unless you counted those pink books with hearts and smiling women on the cover that he wasn’t aware of me knowing about.

“You’re so eager to get rid of me?” Mother smiled, laughing as I pulled her along to the library. I skipped down the road, my hair bouncing along in the pigtails my mother had put it into for photo taking.

I shook my head, pointing to the impressive building that housed Saboten’s Public Library. My mother shot me a warm, tender look before picking up speed and running with me up the steps. The sudden rush soon turned to giggles from her and I had to wait patiently as she stopped laughing.

“I’m sorry,” She said, wiping a tear from her eyes, still giggling. “It’s just I’ve never seen anyone so excited by a library.”

She ruffled the top of my head affectionately.

“Okay, before we go in, stay in sight of the lady by the desk, alright? Don’t let any strangers speak to you, don’t leave without me, and don’t use up your pocket money on candy from the vending machine. Got that, Heiwa?”

I nodded, tugging her hand eagerly so I could finally go in.

This sent Kaa-san into another round of giggles, which she automatically tried to hide with her sleeve.

“You’re so cute today! Alright, let’s go in.”

It was…amazing. Rows and rows of shelves, and I could see stairs leading to more floors. A brightly colored sign pointed to a children’s section caught my eye.

Mother followed my gaze and walked me there. As I sat down at a small table, clutching my first book, she crouched down to whisper.

“Okay, I’ll be going now. I shouldn’t be long, and you have plenty of time before they close.” She kissed my cheek and waved before heading off, while I familiarized myself with the book.

Unfortunately, I was quickly disappointed. The books my mother had pointed me to had very basic sentences, very little plot. It took me five minutes to finish the first one, and the cover told me it was for children my age.

I supposed other four year-olds couldn’t read as well as I could. I didn’t know, having never really met anyone near my age. Mother said that I should find playmates my age, but since there were none back home at the Hovel, I supposed Kojiro-san was my only ‘friend’ that wasn’t my family. And I thought that was enough.

I put back the book filled with pictures and looked around for something more interesting. The books my mother had brought from Saboten last time were also simple, though they didn’t have nearly as many pictures. Mother had worried that they would be too advanced for me but I didn’t get _why_.

Initially hesitant, I left the section rather than looking for something else within it. The books in other sections looked so much more ‘adult’ that I would probably prefer them. I passed a few shelves, noticing the familiar pink hearts that dotted covers and recalled those books that Kojiro loved so much. Romance novels, they were called. Boring.

Finally, my eyes were caught by a row of shelves under ‘Adventure’. I grabbed one, noting the illustration of a woman holding twin swords into the air.

“Are you lost?” I look up to see a middle-aged woman looking down at me.

I blink, unsure of why she’d assume when I’m lost when I clearly made my way here. After another glance up at her, I realized she was the lady from the front desk, a librarian my mother said, and thus safer than a stranger.

“This isn’t the children’s section. Come, let me help you find some good books, alright?” I shook my head and placed the book back on the shelf so I could retrieve the little notepad and matching tiny pencil I generally used to communicate. The woman’s eyes widened as I began writing a note for her.

“I have already looked in the kid’s section. I wanted something less simple.” Finishing, I pointed to my throat and then moved my hand side to side, to show I couldn’t speak. Her look became pitying quickly after that, to my irritation, before she pushed her glasses up.

“I see, well, these books might be a little hard for you. Would you like me to give you an encyclopedia or dictionary in case you need help?” I nodded, unsure of what an encyclopedia was. The woman looked at the back of the book I had put back, quirking up her lip.

“This book shouldn’t be too inappropriate for a young child, in subject matter.” She muttered, walking to a shelf with very thick books.

Five minutes later, I was in the possession of an encyclopedia, a dictionary, and _The Dishonored Hero_ , the book I picked up. The encyclopedia turned out to be as interesting as the book was – so much information, all in one book! I leafed through the pages, stopping at random to read the information. I wanted a book like this, perhaps for my next birthday. Even more amazing was the index in the back – I could look up random things!

It was an accident when I landed on a page that read _Ichizoku_. Clans. I read it quickly, pondering over the meaning when I noticed that it said there was a list in the index, with page numbers. I quickly flipped to it, wondering if that meant shinobi clans as well. Shinobi were so secretive, but Kojiro mentioned clans being famous, so perhaps…

There it was.

 

> うちは一族
> 
> _Uchiha Ichizoku._

The Uchiha Clan. It took up half the page, with a portion of that delegated to a symbol, a red and white paper fan.

 

> _“An ancient clan, primarily of shinobi, the Uchiha hailed from the Land of Fire. The earliest records of the clan’s existence date back eight hundred years and similar accounts of them are found throughout the earliest years of the Warring States Era. On [a date seventy years ago], the leader of the Uchiha, Uchiha Madara founded Konoha with the leader of the Uchiha’s rival clan, Senju Hashirama. Due to succession disagreements, Madara then left the village and his clan behind, before falling in battle to Hashirama. The clan had existed peacefully within the clan structure of Konoha (see page 472 for ‘Clan Systems of Konoha’) until [date five years previously], they were murdered, with one known survivor. They are now on the brink of extinction.”_

Five. I was _four_.

I blinked, not understanding. The date for the massacre was in late summer, the fifth anniversary would be coming up soon. I was born on the fifth of August, though almost two months earlier than I should have been. If Kojiro was right, if I was of this clan, then I obviously was the child of a survivor but the only survivor would have been a few years older than I am now – it was that boy I kept seeing? Sasuke…

It made little sense.

What’s worse is that they were all gone. I didn’t know this before and it sounded horrible, that someone one day just decided to kill them all. Even they weren’t my family, such a thing _shouldn’t_ happen to people. Did mother know? Is that why she never mentioned my father, besides the fact he was a client?

I shut the encyclopedia, too disturbed to keep reading it, and focused on the book instead. Surely it’d be happier than suddenly finding out that the clan of ninja I hoped to meet one day were all dead.

I must have been completely absorbed in the beautiful adventures of Tomoe Gozen, the female samurai protagonist of _The Dishonored Hero_ , that I didn’t notice when the woman came up to me.

“Miss, we’re closing soon. I’d let you check that book out, but you would need a guardian for a card. I frowned, looking up to see if my mother was there. No sign of her. Sighing, I shut the book and carried it to its shelf, resolving to finish it tomorrow, or ask my mother for helping signing it out. I could feel the librarian watching me but I ignored her, waiting by the entrance.

Ten minutes later, and the librarian ushered me outside, saying she had to close up. I frowned, wondering where my mother was. The librarian asked me where she was and I shrugged, pointing to the ground to show I had to wait for her.  She frowned at that and kept looking back at me as I sat down on the steps to wait for Kaa-san when the librarian left.

Bored, I drew in my note pad. Sometimes, I tried to draw Sasuke, but his hair was really weird. If I ever meet him, I’ll tell him to cut it so it’s easier to draw.

Several scribblings later, I noticed how dark it was, and still no mother. I gulped, hoping I wouldn’t have to disobey her. I didn’t want Kaa-san to be mad at me, but it was getting cold and I was hungry. I counted down five more minutes before resolving to go back to the inn myself, rationalizing that even if mother was mad, at least I wouldn’t be hungry.

A strange thought struck me – what if she was with a client? I shook my head of such thoughts immediately… Kaa-san wouldn’t use our room for that, surely.

Kaa-san _was_ in our room.

She was alone, but she wasn’t herself. When I walked in, she didn’t notice me, despite my making sure I made enough noise entering to alert her of my entrance. Her eyes were sort of glassy. I prodded her before she acknowledged my presence.

“Heiwa,” She said, a lazy drawl to it. She laid there, a small smile on her face as she looked up at the ceiling, unmoving. Her pupils were dilating. I noticed a warm pipe at the beside end table and grew furious.

_How could she?_

Grabbing my pocket money, I marched out and found several vending machines, making sure to get the sweetest foods I could, the ones that would really rot my teeth.

That would show her.

Then we’d both have bad teeth and be miserable.

It was only after eating the candy and sweets I’d brought that my anger at my mother lessened. My mother had frequent bouts of pain and seizures, I knew that. It wasn’t her fault she was born with them, she had to stop the pain somehow.

I eyed the pipe, knowing that for all the harm it did, it was making Kaa-san feel better. And I couldn’t be mad at her. I love my mother.

Saddened, I put my sweets away and tuck her in. I’ll forgive her this once and not mention it. Just this once.

 ***

Someone was watching me. I wasn’t sure how I knew – but someone was. It seemed odd – the playground my mother had left me in today was empty now, and I was the only child left. The monkey bars had proved themselves boring and too little of a challenge for me, the side effect of the training Kojiro put me under, no doubt, so I decided to amuse myself in the sandbox with a discarded pail some other child had left behind.

I was well into shaping the moat for my sandcastle when my observer finally revealed himself to me.

“Hey!” A voice said, and I looked up from my work to ogle the speaker. It was a boy around my age, maybe a year older, dressed head to toe in the clothes the _Yuubokumin_ were wearing; a nomad boy from Kaze no Kuni. He peered at me from behind bright hot-pink cat’s eye glasses that clashed with his light brown skin.

I eyed them with intensity. Pink was such a pretty color.

The boy stumbled back, flushed at I began observing him as intently as he had been observing me.

“W-What are you staring at?” he said, frustration evident.

I pointed to his glasses and he reached to touch them.

“These? These are just nee-chan’s, and just because they’re pink doesn’t mean they’re girly or something, got that?” I blinked, unsure of how pink and ‘girly’ correlated. Pink was just a very nice color, in my opinion.

The boy suddenly glared at me and crossed his arms in front of his chest.

“Anyway, that doesn’t matter! You’re the quick-running girl.”

Quick-running girl? What? I’d never been confused like this in my short four years of life.

The boy pointed an accusing finger at me.

“I saw you! You keep running around really fast, too fast, and no one else sees you! Well, I did and you obviously know some sort of trick!”

Oh.

Suddenly, I remembered that all those times I would lightly pour chakra into my legs to runner quicker, I would have to pass through a bunch of nomads. I’m sure I almost knocked into a nomad boy once. Perhaps this was him.

Embarrassment hit me hard. If a boy my age spotted me what stopped experienced shinobi from doing as well? I must have been very obvious.

 Even worse, it was a kid my own age wanting something from me. I never really met children my age before, there being none in the Hovel, and so actually interacting with one was surreal. This boy was so demanding too, how could I get him to leave me alone – after all, I couldn’t talk to him.

This was precisely why I never really wanted a playmate my age, despite Rei tut-tutting that I needed one and my mother agreeing. Most kids couldn’t read, as my excursion to the library had proved.

Also, adults were more interesting. And they had candy sometimes.

Blushing, I resolved to ignoring him, hoping he’d eventually leave me alone. I returned to my moat.

This worked for half a minute.

“Stop ignoring me!” The nomad boy blustered. I continued to do so until I felt the most peculiar thing. A sudden, painful tugging sensation in the back of my head.

_He was pulling on my pigtails._

Whipping around, I raised my palm in the air and smacked him across the face. The boy whimpered as he fell back on his butt. He looked at me in shock and I swore I could see the beginnings of tears in his honey-brown eyes.

Good. I huffed from irritation at the boy who dared pull my pigtails. He absolutely deserved that, and now he’d cry and run away, leaving me alone like I wanted.

He stood up and raised his glasses, wiping the tears away. Then he put them back on and glared at me with such fury that I wondered if perhaps hitting him wasn’t the best of ideas.

“You _hit_ me.” The boy spat out before raising his own hand and smacking me back before I could react. Unlike him, I didn’t tear up, merely rubbed the stinging part of my face as he looked at me with a smug expression. I grit my teeth at him. That smile was mocking me.

 I lunged for the front of his beige robes and pulled him into the sandbox before delivering another blow, only to have it met with sand being thrown my face. I cringed, trying to rub the gritty particles out of my eyes before I felt him push me down and punch me in the arm. Giving up on the rubbing, I grabbed his hand and chomped down.

“Ow! Ow! Get off!” He screamed, shaking the hand and, once again, pulling on my hair. I shook my head while still clamping down on it. With a furious yell, he used his hand to slam my face down into my castle, ruining it and causing sand to cover both of us. I let go of him to stop any sand from entering my mouth and frowned at the remains of my castle before glaring back at the boy, who was looking at the bite marks I had left.

“You’re crazy, you know that? Why the hell would you hit me?” He backed away, obviously worried that I was going to jump on him again.

I narrowed my eyes and pointed at my pigtails. His eyes widened in understanding.

“Oh, I guess you don’t like your hair being pulled. S-sorry, I guess – but you still bit me! That’s _weird_!” I shrugged and immediately began planning a new castle. He plopped down next to me, staring at the sand.

“I’m sorry, I just didn’t want you to ignore me. You didn’t even say anything.”

Sighing, I pointed to my throat and then shook my head, opening my mouth for emphasis. His face fell flat.

“Wait, are you trying to tell me you can’t talk?” The nomad boy repeated.

I nodded, pointing again to my throat.

“Oh,” He looked down, embarrassed. “How do you talk then? You know, to your parents and stuff.” I took my finger and began tracing a character in the sand. He perked up.

“Oh, you can write! That makes sense – I can read some!” The boy chirped, his mood changing immediately. It made me a bit dizzy – this boy was a bit much. He put his hand on his face, humming in thought.

“How about this, you write down how you went down so fast so I can learn how to do it too.” I chuckled from how ridiculous that sounded. Learning how channel chakra was hard and Kojiro said it was amazing as much as I did now. Obviously I couldn’t teach this boy anything. And I didn’t really want to, because there was sand in my hair and he pulled my pigtails. I wrote the character for ‘no’ in the sand.

The boy from Kaze whined in disappointment and began pouting at me. “Come on, look, I said I’m sorry, so pretty please? With a plum on top? I’ll do _anythiiiinnnngggg_.”

I sighed, wishing he’d just leave me alone. Well, I could try to teach him to meditate, that’s how I started learning anyhow. He wouldn’t learn how to do it but at least he wouldn’t keep bother me. Although…

I looked at those pretty glasses again. So pink…

I poke his glasses again.

“Except give you my glasses, Nee-chan would strange me while I sleep or slip a beetle into my stew again.”

His sister sounded violent. I approve. I kept poking the glasses, because I wasn’t giving up, as I just wanted to wear them for a bit.

“Fine!” He conceded with a note of anger in his voice. “Just until I have to leave!” He slipped them off and I grabbed them, fitting them over my face.

_Whoa._

I raised them up to clear the world as I looked for some reflective surface. I sprang up to go to the slide and peered at myself I best I could with the world being so sharp.

So cute!

I smiled at my reflection, noting how nice the pink looked with my freckles. Glasses were very cute, and I sort of wished I had a pair. I turned back to the boy, who was staring at me with a smile on his face.

“You don’t look too bad in them…but can I have them back now?” I nodded and gave them to him, walking back to the sandbox, thinking of how to simply explain the process of drawing up chakra.

I sat down and began drawing the katakana for ‘chakra’ out. He sat beside me, watching me write. When I was done, he sounded the words out. “Chi..ya...ku...ra? Wait, chakra? I’ve heard of that stuff!” He gave me an odd look. “Are you a ninja?”

I shrugged, not wishing to answer that, and wiped the katakana away to write ‘maybe’. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing, so I continued explaining.

“You just have to sit still and try to feel it.”

“That doesn’t explain too good.” He answered me. “Like how? How does it help you run that fast?”

“More speed…” Truthfully, I didn’t exactly how chakra really worked either. Kojiro would, he had books on chakra theory that he told me were above my reading range.

“So it just helps…But what about feeling it?”

I frowned, looking to see if there was a leaf of some sort or something thin around that I could use to help him. Kojiro had used playing cards with me. Suddenly I remembered that I had my little notepad with me (I’d forgotten the pencil) and took it out, ripping out a blank page before handing it over. I ripped out another and placed it on the back of my hand, closing my eyes to help focus the spread of chakra to that hand. Once I felt the paper ‘stick’, I turned my hand over to show him how the paper kept sticking to my hand instead of falling.

The boy’s eyes were as big as eggs.

“That’s so cool…” He said before copying me. He gulped in a huge breath before smacking the paper down over his hand and held it out. After a few seconds, he turned it over, face falling flat when the paper drifted down into the sand.

“It’s not working!” He whined at me.

I snorted to myself.

“Yes, it took me weeks.” I wrote down.

“Weeks? No way!” He shook his head.

I shrugged, wiping the sand once more.

“Heh, you must not be good then, I’ll get it done in _days_.” The nomad boy said, that smug look from earlier on his face once more. I resisted rolling my eyes at the presumption, most likely it’d take him months if he continued.

A glance at the sky told me that that the sun was halfway down the summer sky, meaning mother would come soon. I rose, dusting myself off. The boy stopped his other attempt to look at me leaving.

“Hey, wait up!” I turned back, raising an eyebrow.

“Well,” He looked away, rubbing his head. “You’re weird but you know about this chakra stuff, so will you be here tomorrow?”  

Frowning, I looked over him again. He was whiny, pushy, and obviously believed too much in himself. But at least he hit hard, which could only be a boon for a person, and he could read so he wasn’t a dumb kid like I thought.

The sad thing was that, despite wanting him to leave me alone, that fight was fun. And so was teaching him about chakra, even if it didn’t do anything.

Maybe Rei was right. Maybe having another a friend, one my age, would be okay.

I nodded.

He gave me a wide smile, teeth brightening his whole face. I returned a small smile.

“My name is Osamu, Sakyuu no Osamu!” He said, reaching his hand. I eyed it, unsure of what to do with exactly? Bite it? Didn’t some people shake them in greeting. I shook it, unsure if I was doing the right thing, before dropping it awkwardly.

He found this funny and giggled at me. “You’re really weird. What’s your name?”

I crouched down, writing the kanji for Heiwa down in the sand. My mother had named me after a brand of tea she liked (Peace Tea), so my name was in kanji unlike many women’s names in the Hovel.

“Heiwa? Like the tea company?” Osamu blinked. I nodded vigorously, wondering if I could ask my mother to buy some. It must be fairly popular.

“Heiwa!” I perked up, hearing my mother. Waving goodbye to Osamu, I ran up to my mother, who cocked her head at the boy near the sandbox.

Taking my hand, she gave me a knowing smile. “Make a new friend?” She asked as we walked out of the park and to the inn. I nodded, smiling up at her.

He wasn’t much, but maybe he’d be fun, this Osamu of the Sand Dunes.

***

_Another dream, another vision it felt like I was watching, not being part of. I could see two men stand over a huge, walled city that was absolutely filled with trees. The two men looked down upon it, wearing cloaks of black and red clouds. They conversed between themselves before the vision focused on the shorter man’s face, mostly obscured by a sugegasa, and then his eyes._

_Those eyes? I think I may have seen them, did Sasuke have them when fighting the redhead? Yes, they were same exact shade of crimson._

_Static filled the vision, along with those garbled whispers that I couldn’t make out. The grained against my ears, growing louder and yet still not making any sense. Then they stopped, panning to another vision._

_A man and woman facing the two cloaked men on water – briefly the red-eyed man, who couldn’t be older than my mother despite the tear troughs on his face, moved the collar of his cloak down, revealing his face._

_It looked so much like Sasuke’s and yet… the nose was more pronounced. His eyes too, the shape of them, I had seen them before. Somewhere._

_He also looked dangerous. And I could feel that, even in my dream. The green-jacket wearing men and woman, they were frightened of him and he was years younger than them. His partner, a blue-skinned man that towered over everyone else._

_Uchiha Itachi._

_His name._

_An Uchiha – like Sasuke, which why they look so alike. Another cousin of mine, I supposed. Not one I was glad to have._

_A battle ensued and another man joined the fray. I recognized him as the grey-haired man that had been with Sasuke when Gaara first threatened him. Itachi knew him, they talked across the water – and Itachi’s eyes – they changed?_

_The grey-haired man got pulled into a deep void, a world of black and white inverted. He was stretched out – crucified a part of my mind supplied, and the deep voice of the Uchiha entered the picture._

_**“72 hours.”** He said in a measured voice before stabbing the grey-haired man._

_This continued on for a minute before the vision bubbled into static once more, the hushed voices speaking to me once more in garbled rubbish. When the next vision came, I saw Sasuke running down the road of a fairly festive town, one that looked like the few glimpses of the yukaku I had caught. There was panic on his face, panic and something fierce._

_And then, **then** …_

_A brother poking the other in the forehead. A young Sasuke complaining to his father and his mother – his mother who both Sasuke and his brother so resembled – did all Uchiha look alike? A full moon, a figure enshrouded in shadows perched high up, looking down at the buildings._

_Sasuke’s running home, he might be three or four years older than I here, and then…_

_Blood. It’s everywhere, dotting the walls and ground, almost like the trail of bodies Sasuke finds._

_It’s gruesome, a nightmare, and I suddenly understand – this is it. This is the massacre I read about._

_Sasuke steps into his room, calling out for his mother and father, only to find the glowing eyes of his brother shining through the gloom, stray moonlight illuminating the bodies of his mother and father, lying on his brother’s feet._

_A kunai is thrown._

_And Sasuke is pulled into that black and white world as static envelops mine._

_A brightly lit hallway this time, as Sasuke glares at Itachi and his partner, with the blonde boy standing behind them._

_Itachi’s eyes meet Sasuke and I can see Sasuke lying on the floor, young again, spittle and snot on the floor. His brother asks why, wants to know how someone could do this? I want the same…_

**_“To test my capacity.”_ **

_This enrages Sasuke, he runs towards his brother in a fit of rage, stopped by his brother’s fist in his stomach. Dropping, he comes face to face with the blood-spattered stiff corpse of his father. I can almost feel his fright as he runs out of the room, screaming._

**_"Foolish little brother... If you wish to kill me, hate me, detest me, and survive in an unsightly way.  
Run! Run and cling to life."_ **

_The hallway is back and soon filled with the same noise as the dream nights earlier, of a thousand chirping birds. It surrounded Sasuke’s fist, hot enough that it’s burning skin, and then he flies at a fit of rage, dragging the lightning fist along the wall, no, destroying it._

_Itachi merely catches his wrist and turns the attack towards the wall._

**_“You’re in the way.”_ **

_Sasuke’s friend, the blond, tries to do something, but as he does, Itachi snaps Sasuke’s wrist. An unfamiliar man buts in, yet does nothing as Itachi treats Sasuke like a ragdoll, beating him, kicking him into walls._

_And as he pins his younger brother to the wall by the throat, he leans in, his voice a gentle caress as he whispers into Sasuke’s ear._

**_“You’re still so weak. And do you know why?...It’s because you lack hatred.”_ **

_His eyes change and the world descends into black and white for the final time that night as Itachi promises that Sasuke will relive his clan’s murder for 24 hours._

_And I wake to Sasuke’s screams._

_***_

I woke up shivering, with tears and snot running down my nose. What had that been?

_That vision._

It was worse than any of the ones I’d seen...

My whole body seized up in fear of that man’s treatment of his brother Sasuke. In fear of what he had done, what he was capable of.

_Killed._

I ran to the bathroom, sparing no thought for my mother, as I suddenly recalled the Massacre part of the dream. The killing. Each swing.

Sasuke screaming at the end, his brother torturing him. I vomited into the toilet before falling back onto the floor, panting and shaking out of fear…

I don’t understand this!

Why was I seeing this? Why were these visions coming to my dreams? Were they taking place the same time as I saw them? Earlier? No, the day I saw Sasuke fight Gaara – that was after, since the morning after we’d gotten the news of the Exams that happened a day earlier…

And the time…

I wanted to tell Kaa-san.

I really, _really_ wanted to tell her I was seeing this. But that look of fear in her eyes when she heard the name ‘Uchiha’, that stopped me. Mother would either laugh it off as the overactive imagination of a little girl, or she’d do… she’d do something, but whatever it was, seeing things like this wasn’t normal.  

So, instead, I laid my head against the cool tiles of the inn floor and let my fear carry me back to sleep.

 ***

“You don’t look too good.” Osamu said, looking down at me from his perch on top of the monkey bars. I shrugged, not willing to divulge that I spent half the night sleeping in our bathroom, where mother had found me. I blamed it on some sweets I ate the night before and had to endure Kaa-san’s scolding.

Mother thought that perhaps I should take a day to rest in bed, but I protested, remembering the nomad boy would be waiting for me. Luckily, my desire to see my ‘friend’ must have stirred something sentimental in her, as she bought me two bento before dropping me off at the park.

I don’t think I’m going to share.

Osamu grinned up at me, holding the paper over his head.

“Hey, I practiced last night!”

“Did it do anything?” I wrote out in my notepad, having brought my pencil with me today.

The grin lost its edge.

“Not really,” Osamu admitted. “I think I felt something funny towards the end, near my tummy, but that could have been the sand dumplings.” I made a face, both at how boring that was and at the sand dumplings. I hated those things.

“So, until I get that, is there anything else? I mean, it’s not like ninja just sit around and try to make paper stick to them or something, right? You know something else?”

“I only said I’d help you be as fast as I was, nothing else!” I scribbled angrily.

He pouted and turned large brown eyes at me, like some sort of hungry dog.

“Aww, come on, please, Heiwa-chan?”

Heat spread to my face. _Heiwa-chan_. The only people who called me that were adults. Having a boy call me that was _strange_. Said boy noticed the blushing and cracked down on it immediately.

“ _Heiwaaaaaa-chan_. Come on, help me out, please? Don’t be mean, Heiwa-chan!” I wanted to hit him, instead I rolled up a used piece of paper and threw at his face. The teasing immediately stopped as it hit him, but it gave me an idea.

An evil idea.

“Heiwa-chan, that look on your face, it’s not a good thing...”

I smiled harder as I wrote down what I wanted him to do, and before he could run off, quickly picked up the pebbles I needed.

Revenge was nice, I could see why shishou tended to do this to me. Plus, I improved my aim with this! Watching Osamu scamper around and dodge my pebbles was pretty fun, especially since he kept getting madder throughout it and messed up more. They weren’t thrown hard, and probably felt like a flick more than anything, but Osamu turned out to be absolutely wonderful for target practice.

It might have been terrifying, but at least I was a gentler sensei than Kojiro.

But eventually throwing things at Osamu got boring, as he started figuring out how to dodge them, and my arm began to hurt. Deciding to stop for the day, I bribed him with that extra bento to go to the library with me.

I didn’t have to really, Osamu liked reading as much as I did.

Which was nice, I guess.

***

The days passed by like that. With no more dreams disturbing me, my days were split between my mother and Osamu. Sometimes he and I would observe the Amegakure shinobi, and sometimes we’d go read in the library. I met his sister, who was totally awesome and gave me a high five for hitting Osamu, since ‘he needs the fear of women in him’ or something. I didn’t exactly get that part.

Mother’s coworkers pitched in for a belated birthday present. Several hair ties and hairclips, all with plastic fruit on them. I liked them very much and immediately put the pineapple ones in my hair.

Of course, my days in the town were numbered, and so were Osamu’s. His family were nomads, after all, and generally only stayed in the town for a week or so. I told him I didn’t care that he was going away, but I wasn’t really telling the truth. He was nice to have around, and he thought of good pranks, not that we had the chance to put them in action. He may have been totally useless at chakra, I think, but at least he wasn’t dull.

Osamu didn’t look happy at leaving me either, but unlike me, he had friends. I noticed several children running around the nomad encampment. Osamu had playmates, none like me, but I’d be forgotten soon enough.

And I? I had Kojiro. And that was enough, I supposed.

The day before he left, I finally went back to Daichi’s little shop, this time taking Osamu with me. He insisted after learning I was basically going on a ‘mission to a secret shinobi shop’. We even sneaked the best we could there, trying to escape any chance of someone from the Akasen noticing us (Osamu had been pretty unaffected when he learned of my mother’s line of work, something I was grateful for. Mother had been worried that would get me teased).

I’m not sure what Daichi was expecting when he opened the door to us, but two children were probably not it.

“It’s Kojiro’s brat.” He said gruffly, before his eyes slid to Osamu’s grinning, ecstatic face. “And another brat! Brat,” He pointed to me. “What part of ‘hidden’ do you not understand?” I shrugged up at him, as it was unlikely Osamu would tell anyone, considering he was leaving.

“Wow,” Osamu said, disbelievingly. “A _real_ shinobi.”

I coughed loudly, unsure of how Daichi, with grease staining his clothes, pot belly, and holey socks, could ever make anyone think of real shinobi. Kojiro was more impressive, and he wore _bathrobes_ and a fluffy slipper indoors.

“What, you blind? There’s a bunch of real shinobi outside, kid.” Daichi muttered, pushing us both inside and sliding the door shut.

“Yeah, but they’re not hiding,” Osamu said. “Oh, and some of them are really lame. Heiwa and I saw one trip over his feet yesterday. And most can’t handle heat.” I nodded in agreement.

Daichi snorted.

“You kids are from the desert, don’t expect teenagers from a rainforest to know how to handle dry heat. I’d like to see you lot brave snow.”

Osamu threw me a perplexed look.

“Heiwa-chan, what’s snow?” I shrugged, knowing that it was some sort of cold rain.

“That’s adorable.” Daichi said, walking to the back and retrieving a huge box of things. “‘What’s snow?’, he says, ha!” He hefted the box on a counter and bid to come look.

“Blunt training kunai and shuriken,” He held up a couple of parcels. “Ninja wire, a new edition of _A Shinobi’s History of Mizumi no Kuni_ , fresh from the classroom. Knee guards, sealing scrolls, several packs of senbon, and a damn good bottle of Ta no Kuni’s shochu.”

“Wait, shochu is a weapon? Can you make it explode?” Osamu asked, eyeing the bottle of rice spirit.

“Everything’s a weapon, kid, and fairly easily. Kojiro ever tell you the story about the siege in the First War, Heiwa-san?” I nodded, remembering that particular story. Kojiro had been a very young shinobi during the First Shinobi War, and had barely survived. He was fond of recollecting it, I understood, because it was during the Second War, that his homeland had been destroyed. The First War had much less baggage.

Osamu raised an eyebrow. “ _Cool_! Wait, wait! Why _blunted_ kunai?”

I took picked up of the blunted kunai, running my finger along the blunted edge. Kojiro was obviously going to train me in their usage, which is what all this was for. And blunted because…

“I don’t Kojiro intends to kill her with these, brat. That’s why.” I gulped. Blunt or not, the fact I would have to dodge these things now when I got back… Osamu must have read my mind because he started cackling, understanding that the universe was delivering retribution for my stone-throwing this week.

I placed the kunai back and waited for Daichi to work his magic, and for Osamu to react to his first sealing scroll. His mouth was left hanging as the box disappeared, as if never it had never been there. It felt funny seeing him react. Months ago, that had been me.

Could one change so quickly?

***

Mother and I got up early to bid Osamu goodbye, heading towards the Yuubokumin encampment. Even such a small time after dawn, the camp was in a flurry of activity. Osamu ran towards me the moment we came into view.

I felt myself being pulled into a hug and squirmed in his grasp. The other boy just hugged me harder before finally letting go and giving me a small smile.

“It’s good to see you again, Heiwa-chan. This week has been really fun.” He said.

I wanted to walk away, feeling both embarrassed and strangely unhappy to be separated so soon, but the feeling of something cool being dropped in my hand stopped me. A bright cyan stone glinted at me.

“Turquoise, from our sacks.” Osamu said. “I lifted it. Nee-san told me that you might like something pretty and shiny so you get a stone. Just don’t throw it like you do with stones usually!” I huffed, annoyed he’d think I’d do that to such a pretty thing. I noticed my mother, standing to the side, watching us fondly.

Noticing my mom’s gaze, Osamu chose to whisper his next words. “I’ll keep practicing! And maybe, when I get it right, I can ask my grand to let me go to Suna like my cousin and be a shinobi. Even if we aren’t in the same village, we’ll meet again, right?” He asked me, voice full of hope.

I wasn’t sure it worked like that but I nodded, aware of there being something stuck in my throat.

A woman with a thick Kaze accent called for him. I could see pinpricks of tears behind those bright pink glasses as he waved goodbye and ran to enter a wagon. Mother walked up to me, picking up the turquoise stone.

“How pretty, Heiwa-chan! I’ll ask Rei to make a necklace for you.” I nodded, keeping my eyes on the wagons and caravans leaving the square, Osamu’s among them. As the sun rose in the sky, the Yuubokumin again left Saboten for other towns, back to the desert they had traveled since time immemorial, my first real friend among them.

“Heiwa, are you crying?” Kaa-san asked. I nodded, wiping the tears away from my face.

I don’t think I think I was cut off for this ‘farewell’ stuff.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have questions? Ask them at Baezetsu, my tumblr.


	6. VI

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year passes, with some changes in Heiwa's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope those that of you that celebrate it on the 25th had a good one, and those that don't, have a great New Year's/Novi God. As a present, welcome to the first of many 'GET REKT' chapters. We're actually entering an arc of such chapters, isn't that fun? 
> 
> Also, a warning: HIS CHAPTER CONTAINS STRONG, EXTREMELY SEXIST LANGUAGE AND MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT AND DRUG ADDICTION. OH AND VIOLENCE. PLEASE DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE VERY SENSITIVE TO MENTIONS OF ANY OF THE ABOVE.
> 
> Oh, and bolded speech is now the indication that it is being communicated through sign language.

  **Seeking Peace**

**Chapter VI**

***

" **No, not like that, knees spread wider!"** Kojiro signed at me. I jerked my head in annoyance at him correcting me yet again and moved them further apart, keeping my grip, which he'd also constantly corrected, on the kunai.

" **This is a stance that means you are ready to move at a second's notice. You are poised to strike, dodge, and counter at once. Your kunai is merely part of you, and dropping it should be like dropping a limb."**

I held it, molding myself into this position. Second nature, Kojiro had said earlier. All of this would eventually be as natural as breathing. There'd be nothing to holding a kunai properly (especially when my hands would grow), and there'd be nothing to throwing them either.

Sometimes shinobi weren't given the luxury of thinking during battle.

Two blunted shuriken came flying at me, and I jumped aside, careful to try and slide into the exact same position I left, kunai raised in the air.

Shishou came forward and started clicking his teeth while rearranging my body.

"Loosen," He said, hands too busy to sign. During more theoretical lessons, our conversations would be fully in the signs we had learned together, though quite early on Kojiro had received a book that helped me learn Standard Elemental Sign Language, or SESL, and we switched from Uzumaki codes to SESL. It was for my benefit, he'd explained, as SESL would be used to communicate with me as I grew older.

An extra benefit of all the sign language I was learning was that my fingers became quick and nimble, and practicing hand seals for ninjutsu, not that Kojiro was teaching me any, came easy when my fingers became used to the feeling of moving for similar shapes.

While my training was still a secret, Kojiro had mentioned to my mother that he was teaching me SESL, and learning it himself. None of us were prepared for amount of crying she did, looking so happy that he'd so something like that for me. Mother and Rei even told me of their interest in wishing to learn it, so I shared a few words with them. Simple things like 'I love you' or 'Goodnight', and 'I'm hungry'. I would have done more, but Mother started feeling more under the weather during the late spring after the summer I turned four.

"No, too tense, don't strain yourself holding it." Kojiro grabbed my arm again and began lightly shaking it. I relaxed, annoyed that he was breaking me out of the stance he was telling me to hold.

Training to be a kunoichi was arduous, trying, and even if Kojiro said I was amazing for my age, I never felt good enough. I had to try again and again and then if I couldn't, figure out some other way. And for other things, I'd find loopholes and ways of doing it that Kojiro disagreed with. Like with sums, I multiplied things up quickly and used tricks to help, 'instead of actually memorizing the correct way' of doing them. Kojiro said that it was the problem with smart children – we knew how to 'bullshit' our way through things instinctively, that we ended up never putting in full effort.

Of course this caused bouts of pouting between Kojiro and I. Personally, as long as the result was the same, I didn't care and dismissing my hard work as me cheating was irritating. Kojiro just waved off my complaints, saying that I wouldn't learn until a mistake led to a problem mid-battle.

And then there was the fact he wouldn't teach me ninjutsu yet. It was 'risky' and Kojiro didn't believe I could manage one of the non-foundation ones yet. The first time he told me this, I marched home and didn't go to any sessions for days. Rei had to yell at me before I begrudgingly went back to 'learn my sums and letters'.

Not that I didn't have a great amount of work on my plate, I still had to learn my academics, though part of me wondered why when, hopefully, I could enter a shinobi academy next spring, or the spring after next. According to Kojiro, Amegakure had recently made the length of the shinobi student training four years, meaning I could be a licensed genin by the time I was ten, or eleven.

And as for the dreams, well they'd been silent, except for the series of dreams I had in early winter, or was it very late fall? I did not see that scary, red-eyed young man, no, this time it was Sasuke and his friend, Naruto. The dream had been fuzzy but they were fighting, fiercely, a real battle to the death. I hadn't seen the conclusion though I guess Sasuke had won. Remarkably, there were no dreams after that.

I wasn't sorry for the break in them – watching Itachi handle Sasuke like that had been frightening. There was a small piece of me worrying about my teenage cousin, wherever he was running to, and I sincerely hoped he was avoiding his brother. I took the lack of new visions to mean that nothing tremendous was happening, which I supposed was a good thing in this case.

Of course, I couldn't say the same here. With the assassination of the Kazekage, Kaze no Kuni was thrown into chaos, the aftershocks could be felt here. Rogue Suna shinobi, seizing their one chance to run in the chaos, used the canyons to hide and escape. Kojiro warned everyone in the Hovel to be vigilant once we returned with news of the failed invasion. The assassination of a Kage was seen as prime time to go 'missing'. In the coming months, the daimyo of Wind was assassinated as well, replaced by a new one that was more willing to cooperate with the shinobi village in his land.

"Are you purposely getting this wrong, Heiwa?" Kojiro yelled at me, moving my hands back into position. "This isn't time to daydream, this is time to train!"

I seized up, broken out of my thoughts and return to the position he wanted me. Kojiro sighed, lowering my right arm again.

"You'll get it soon enough. This will be muscle memory by the time you enter the Academy." I huffed myself, annoyed with this exercise. Kojiro finally let go of me and picked up some kunai while pointing to the edge of the cliff we were currently training on. He motioned to me again and I sat down not so far from the edge, waiting for him to join me.

Kojiro sat across from me, gesturing with one of the blunted kunai he had picked up. "Well, the stance training won't suddenly get better, so let's move on with the essential knowledge. Now, what's this?"

I rolled my eyes before signing, **"A Kunai."**

"Wrong! What is this?" He repeated.

I blinked, unsure of what he meant. That was a kunai, obviously. I could feel a lecture coming on.

" **A weapon."** I signed back, hoping that was what he wanted.

"No," Kojiro shook his head, tousled grey locks flying. "You're right, but that's not the answer I want. Any final guesses?"

I shrugged to show I had none.

"This," He raised the kunai to my eye level. "Is a common garden trowel."

What?

" **And since it is blunted you can see it in its original glory, before we shinobi got to it."** He handed it to me and I plunged it into the ground, disturbing the tightly packed dirt. It took a slight adjustment of my grip to make it dig easier but I could definitely see that, for all intents and purposes, this _was_ a garden trowel.

" **Before these were mass produced for shinobi purposes, shinobi relied on getting these from blacksmiths or raiding farmers. Considering that we used to pose as farmers frequently, it was probably turned into a weapon from our reliance on our covers. And what do you suppose a shuriken is?"**

I dropped the kunai, returning my hands to my knees, waiting for him to produce a shuriken. Kojiro took one of our training ones out of his pouched and held it up.

"The resemblance is harder to spot, after so many different designs and over half a century of mass production, but these used to be needles, nails, and coins. A small flame could melt those together easily enough." He twirled it around his index figure.

"The old name for these is hirashuriken. Senbon? They used to be called boshuriken, and of course that was anything oblong and sharp: needles, kogai, and chopsticks. Now tell me, Heiwa, what do these have in common?"

I frowned, trying to find the link. These were all weapons of course, but I think he was trying to make look past that.

I had to look down at the trowel once more before I was sure of my answer.

" **They all aren't meant to be weapons."**

Kojiro nodded approvingly.

"We used to say back in Uzushiogakure that a ninja should be able to walk into a room and see a hundred ways to harm someone without using nin or tai jutsu. The reason why that saying works is because we didn't have our own weapons back then. Our weapons were what was around us. Resourcefulness matters more than one's weapon. Tell me, what's a weapon you see here?"

I swept the bare canyon cliffs with my gaze, searching for weapons. I pointed to the pebbles and rocks first, before moving my finger to the tumbleweed.

"That's a good start. A good weapon, Heiwa-chan, is versatile. The stone, like a kunai, can slice and stab. Like a shuriken it can be thrown. And like a senbon, in the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, it can hit what you wish it to."

A small breeze picked up, taking both causing me to notice that the sun had slowly crept down the summer sky, alerting my teacher and I that our session would need to end soon. Kojiro frowned and stood up.

"I want you to go home and write me a list of every single thing you encounter in the first room that can be used as a weapon."

I pouted, annoyed at how long that assignment could take. Kojiro chuckled upon seeing my expression and offered his hand to help me up.

"You know it's for your own good, right?" He asked, still smiling.

I did. But no one ever had to like their homework.

* * *

It was a beautiful summer day. Despite my presence being necessary to find dried pods for my mother, Rei-oba-san just told me to run around, only stopping me to present a small flower crown she had made with the early blooms we'd found.

"Bend your head, Heiwa." Rei said, sitting on the dirt in the field outside the Hovel. I did so, staying still as she moved my black locks all over my head to secure the crown of lilac and red poppies. A few minutes later of her tugging my hair into place, my aunt in all but blood leaned away and smiled up at me, the wrinkles in her face deepening from her expression.

"I wish I had a camera. You'll show Suiren, right?" My fingers inched up, running my fingers along the soft petals, nodding. She grinned, but I could see less of the usual mirth that she had when dealing with me. And I knew just why.

Kaa-san was sick. Sicker than usual.

It started in the late spring. Mother's usual condition worsened and she postponed going back to Saboten for another work period, feeling too ill to work. A spring fever, she declared, claiming it would pass soon.

It was summer now, and it hadn't. I wasn't privy to most of it, but Rei noticed my mother's weight-loss and the increase of her fainting spells. Of course, Mother laughed Rei's concern off and said that if it worsened she'd go to a doctor in Saboten. She increased her tea-drinking, however, which is why, weeks after the weapons lesson on the canyon, mother sent Rei and I out to grab her another batch of poppy pods for her tea. The poppies grown out on the border were a strange bunch; long before the creek bed the Hovel was built on had dried, the area that consisted of my home had been used for farming and sending out crops to cities like Saboten and those further out in the desert. Given the historical use of opium in this part of the continent, my mother suspected that the poppy field had been planted long before Kojiro had bought this land and was abandoned.

Regardless, the pods served my mother well. And with her strange illness, she needed the tea more than ever.

I was busy chasing several butterflies around the field, trying to catch them in my palm, when Rei called me back over to her with a strange tone of voice.

"Heiwa, come here for a second." I stopped chasing a bright blue butterfly, skipping over the flowers and back to Rei, a hand in my hair to steady the crown and stop it from slipping off.

Rei frowned at me and put her hands in her lap.

"I don't know if I should tell you, but Heiwa, your ma isn't getting' any better." I nodded, being aware of that. She had gotten even thinner, and had trouble sleeping.

Rei pointed to a patch of dirt free of flowers and strewn pods for me to sit and join her, so I sat down, wondering why she looked so uncomfortable. She handed me a plant and a small knife to cut the stems and pods. I reach for my first flower.

"I thought it was this tea at first…or the opium. Your ma's never been too good at lettin' go of it and I know how hard it is to break off from the stuff, but I don't think it's that." I threw the newly separated pod and stem down into a basket. A few minutes passed of us working silently before she spoke up again.

"It's usually rare these days," Rei continued. "But when I first started out in the yukaku, the older girls told me of the wastin' sickness. I was careful when I worked, we all had to be, but you'd occasionally hear 'bout of one or two girls…" Rei stopped mid-sentence and clenched her fists.

"I don't remember all of what the girls told me, it was twenty years ago, but there'd be the rapid weight loss, the sunken cheeks for a few months. Mostly it was thought of as some sort of flu or a side effect of opium, which was popular among those in that town, but…" Rei ripped another pod from its stem and threw it in the basket, falling silent.

I nudged her gently, sensing she was wondering whether to tell me this or not. Rei raised her weary eyes to meet mine and sighed.

"I caught Suiren coughin' up blood last night, Heiwa." I blinked. Blood?

"I can't tell whether she's hidin' it or that was the first time, but you know your ma. She's a fool and won't deal with the problem until it starts inconveniencin' others. And if it's wastin' sickness…" She trailed off and I raised my eyebrows, not liking what my aunt was implying. I reached into the pocket sewed on my dress for my notepad and pencil, quickly scrawling out a question.

Rei took my pad when I was down and sounded the words out loud.

"What happens to you with that?" She repeated. I nodded. Rei paused to wipe the sweat from her brow, face twisted in worry.

"Sometimes you live, but are sick for a very long time. And sometimes you don't."

Kaa-san? She was?

I didn't- She _couldn't_ -…

Rei saw the terror on my face and leaned over to sweep me into her arms. I trembled in her grasp, too caught up with the images in my head of mother leaving me, leaving us…

"If it continues, I'll force your ma to Saboten. We can use the money I saved for a good doctor, Heiwa. She just needs to stop being stubborn." She said, patting my hair. I got out of her hug, watching her rub at her eyes. They were suspiciously red when she met mine again and her smile too wide as she motioned for me to run along again.

I returned to my flower field, finding less joy and beauty in the world than I had mere minutes ago.

* * *

"You know this is foolish, pretendin' nothing's wrong!" I opened my eyes, my sleep broken by angry voices coming from the other room.

"You'll wake Heiwa if you keep on like that." My mother said, much calmer than Rei. I heard someone slam a cup on the table in anger, and then more noise, a sign that Rei was pacing.

"Oh, and you think I didn't tell her 'bout last night, do you? She has a right to know her ma's gambling her own life away!"

"I am not gambling anything away, including my life, Rei." My mother's voice in volume and I could hear her valley dialect shine through, a sure sign she was angry.

"Oh, but what do you call what you're doin' then? Smart? Because it sure ain't, let me tell you."

"You're overreacting, like usual."

"Oh _fuck_ that, Suiren! How many times are you going to cough up blood before somethin' gets through that thick head of yours?"

"We don't have the money." Kaa-san answered. I heard Rei stomp over to one of the cabinets and sound of it being roughly opened. A few seconds later and I heard the jingling of coins.

"What do you call this then, air? Don't pretend it's about the money, you just don't like admittin' somethin' went wrong."

"Enough!" Mother screamed, spooking me. She barely raised her voice up that loud or did so this angry. "Rei, this is the last of this I'll be hearing! When, _if_ , I decide that I should be concerned, is when I'll go. And you'll be best not scaring my daughter anymore!"

Rei's next words seemed as if she was on the verge of tears.

"Fine...You do as you please, Suiren." The door slammed, someone having left, and all was silent until the sound of my mother sobbing filled our house.

* * *

I was five years of age by the time mother decided to travel to Saboten, with summer nearing its end. I volunteered to come with her, struck with boredom and a desire to make sure she was alright. Once more, we traveled by covered wagon, stuck for two days amidst animal feed and shabby wooden walls. Such close quarters provided incentive for conversation, but my mother more or less tried to convince me that little was wrong with her, just a particularly long bout of sickness.

"I know Rei has you worried, but it's not too bad, Heiwa. The doctor will- "

Whatever the doctor would have done, my mother never finished her sentence as the covered wagon we were riding in suddenly gave a big lurch before coming to a creaking halt. Confusion spread across my mother's face.

"We shouldn't be there yet, so why are we stopping?" Kaa-san muttered. I peered through a crack in the wagon's walls, also getting confused when I realized it was still daytime. Perhaps Kiminori-san stopped for a bathroom break?

Then we heard shouting.

My mother sent me a look of fear, and then looked at exit out of the wagon.

"Wait here," She said, pointing to the bags of animal feed we had been resting on. "Try to be quiet as possible."

The talking outside only got louder, followed by the irritated whine of a horse, yet that didn't deter my mother from crawling out of the wagon. I waited till she was gone to tiptoe to a crack in the wood that faced in the direction that the sound was coming from.

"-tell me what's going on here?" Kaa-san said.

There were two unfamiliar men outside, dressed in rough work clothes and some chest plate. Swords were attached to their hips, and one of them had his hand placed casually on the hilt.

"No need for such a tone miss, we're just goin' to be takin' a look at the goods here, if you don't mind."

The one with a hand on the hilt chuckled. "Yeah, just collectin' the toll, is all." He flexed his fingers.

My mother stepped back away from them.

"There's no toll on this road." She said.

"You callin' us liars, miss?" He asked, throwing a smile at the other man.

His partner spit on the ground before answering.

"We might have a problem, then. I don't take too kindly to bein' called a liar, see? Even from pretty things like yourself. Do you like being called a liar, Yokuto?"

"Not really," The man grinned at my mother before taking a few steps closer. "So I suggest you step aside before we decide to sample some of the goods before collection."

I could feel my heart drop to my stomach with that. These men – even if I didn't fully understand what he was saying – they were dangerous. My mother stumbled back, as if he repelled her, and the man with the hand on his sword, Yakuto, he was called, walked past her. I leaned away from the crack in the wall, frightened. The man would turn up any second and I'd be found.

And then I remembered that the only thing in this caravan besides the animal feed was money, my mother's money. The money for the doctor.

The only money we had.

My breathing got harsher as my brain processed what that meant.

It meant… _It meant…_

Mother wouldn't go to the doctor.

And if Rei was right, if Rei wasn't just worrying for nothing…

If my mom had gotten worse…

_Kaa-san would…_

"Please, sirs, my daughter – she's…" I could hear my mother say, pleadingly.

The canvas flaps covering the opening to the wagon spread to let in the man, his hideous face finding me within seconds. I stared back.

"There's a little girl in here, alright. What'd you want me to do with her, Saburo?" He said, large hand reaching for me. I crawled back until I hit the end, eyeing his palm, which must have been as large as my entire torso.

"Bring the brat out." The man started crawling in and I climbed one of the bags of feed, wanting to avoid his grasp.

"Oi, brat! Stop movin'!" I pushed a bag at him, but he swatted it outside before snarling and grabbing me with both hands. The stench of stale sake and unwashed skin hit me, sending water to my eyes. I tried pushing him away, getting this horrible-smelling, huge man off me but his grip tightened the more I resisted.

He dragged me out of the caravan and threw me out.

"HEIWA!" Kaa-san yelled as I hit the ground face first. My face began throbbing as I lifted it to see Saburo restrain my mother from coming to my side, his sausage-like fingers resting across her chest and throat.

"Little brat's more trouble than she looks." Yakuto said, and I could see him brush animal feed off his chestplate while glaring daggers at me. "Keep an eye on her."

The man holding my mother, Saburo, gave me a long look. "Looks as foreign as her mother here. Definitely not from round' these parts, are you, miss?" He asked, leaning into talk to my mother's ear. My mother cringed, and I could see her fists tighten.

It was quiet for the next minute, except from the occasional snort from Kiminori-san's (who was laying on the side of the road) horse and shuffling from inside the wagon. I slowly sat up, watching the man who had his hands over Kaa-san.

He noticed my staring and winked before loudly asking, "Found anythin' good yet?"

"No, just the usual crap – wait, hold on-…" was the answer from inside the wagon and we could hear the jangling of metal immediately. Mother paled and I knew, then, that her trying to convince me not be worried, it was all _lies_. She _was really sick_ , and she _was worried_ , and _Rei was right_ , and now these _pigs_ were going to take the last of what we had and….

The man finally stepped out of the wagon, raising our coin bag into the air and shaking it, the sound of coins hitting each other filling the air.

"Not a lot, but decent. This yours' miss?" Yakuto asked, shaking it in front of my mother.

"That's a bit of cash for some peasant, though. And you're not from these parts." Saburo hummed.

His partner frowned in thought before a small, knowing grin spread on his face.

"You know, Yakuto, I think I saw a whore who looks just like her back in Saboten. One of those pricey ones, like at Miyu's. A thin, freckled one."

The man stopped leering at my mother to laugh, his hands slackening as he did so.

"I think you're right. She does look like one of those _mizuno_ sluts chargin' an arm and a leg up in the yukaku. Eh, we right, miss?"

My mother twisted herself out of his grip as the two men laughed and stepped back from both of them.

"Go to hell!" She spat out, falling to her knees the moment she reached me. Immediately I could feel her hands on my face, tracing over a cut I wasn't aware I had.

"You're hurt." Mother stated, taking my face into her hands. I stared back at her, black eyes meeting worried brown ones that looked like she was about to cry.

I shook my head and tried to convey that it was her I was worried about, that these men were a bigger problem than any stinging scrape I managed to get, but our moment was broken by the sound of the two men emptying the coin bag on the ground.

Yakuto crouched down and began counting loudly.

"Two…five…nine…thirteen! Thirteen ryo, around twenty _ichibuban_. Around a full month's salary for a pricey Saboten _jurou_." He stood up, flipping one of the golden ryo into the air and deftly catching it.

"Not bad a haul if we include the horse, though…we can't just leave them penniless, can we?" Saburo bent down, taking a ryo in hand before throwing a glance at my mother.

My mother had a brief look of disbelief in her eyes before the fear settled in. I blinked, obviously misunderstanding something. Why would that man give us _back_ money?

"Heiwa," she whispered to me. "When I say go…"

Saburo smiled down at her.

"Say, what's your going rate? For two?" Another toss of the ryo in the air and suddenly I understood why my mother looked even more afraid than she had been. I latched on the hem of her dress, pulling her back.

One of them shook the bag at her, coaxing a reply. My mother stood up, shaking in fury and face them, as unmoving as a mountain and as cold as its peak.

"You can't afford me."

Yakuto stopped shaking the bag and frowned at her.

"What was that?"

"I said," My mother tossed her head up in the air, meeting their smirking faces dead on with no fear on her face. "A disgusting pig like you can't afford me."

My breath caught in my throat. Of all the times Kaa-san had to be brave, to be strong… I wasn't the only one stunned by her fearlessness, it knocked the two thieves for a loop as well.

"I've had enough of your mouth, whore!" Yakuto yelled, dropping the coins on the ground before making a start in our direction.

"Go, Heiwa, go!" Kaa-san screamed, using her leg to push me. I hesitated for a second, before getting up speeding off into the direction the wagon was traveling to.

"Get the brat!" One of the thugs roared and I heard a large smacking sound, followed by a male grunt of pain from behind. If one of them had chased after me, I didn't know because the moment I couldn't hear my mother cursing and struggling against them, I leapt away with chakra.

Chakra flooded my body, hitting me almost hard as my heart was beating against my chest, and it felt like I was being dipped in ice water. I was running through my fear, one foot after the after, not even thinking of where I was going, just that –

_Ihadtogetawayihadtogetawayihadtogetaway_

Faster and faster, helped with chakra, I left my mother behind me, because she wanted me to. She told me to go, to run, after all, and I am just doing as mother asks, right? Running was what I supposed to do!

_Ihadtogetawayihadtogetawayihadtogetaway_

I wasn't running from my fear.

No.

I wasn't running away because I was scared, and even if I am, I am five years old. I am a little girl and running away from danger was what I had to do.

Like mom said, right?

I am five years-old.

_Ihadtogetawayihadtogetawayihadtogetaway_

I am an obedient little girl, doing as mom asked.

I am five!

I am…am…

**I am a kunoichi.**

I stopped so suddenly that I tripped over my own feet and into the ground, face first once more. I could have laid there for a second, or maybe it was an hour, but it was me, the dirt, and my thoughts.

How could I just run? How could I leave my mother, Kaa-san, who was my everything, my smile, my sweet, gentle mother like that?

My fingers dug into earth as the tears finally started pouring out of my eyes.

What had Kojiro-shishou been teaching me, if not to protect others? Was he this scared when that teenager from Suna had stumbled upon our training session? How about all those times back when he was a shinobi in Uzushiogakure? Kojiro had welcomed me into his home, taught me secrets that were impossible and I…I turned out to be a coward.

I, Heiwa, coward. Leaver of mothers to fates probably worse than death.

I was the lowest of low, a kunoichi who abandoned her mother due to cowardice.

My body shook, and to this day I'm not sure whether it was from grief or rage. But I kept shaking all the way as I stood up and wiped the dirt from my face.

_No._

I was no coward. I was Heiwa, future kunoichi of Mizumi no Kuni. And I was a good daughter, the kind that rescued her mother, not abandoned her.

I took a deep breath to steady myself and began thinking. I knew no ninjutsu but I knew how to fight, how to dodge. I could dodge the (blunted) shuriken, senbon, and kunai that Kojiro threw at me, never mind the rocks. I could twist myself from someone's grasp. I had no kunai, no shuriken, but _resourcefulness matters more than one's weapon_. I was faster than some highway robber – and best of all, I had chakra and I knew a few ways of using it.

I had stones, stones that could cut, stab, and hit others.

I could do this.

I could save my mother.

Stuffing the rocks with the sharpest edges I could find into my pockets, I turned back and ran just as fast. My heart wasn't pounding with fear anymore, and while I could feel my chakra, feel it guiding me almost, feel as it made each step light, like flight, it didn't dip me into ice.

No, this time it felt _right_. There was heat everywhere, even in my eyes as I got closer to where I had left my mother. I could hear yelling, some it my mother's, and the fire I felt spread all over me. I dipped my hand into a pocket and grasped the rock as I sped towards them.

And _then I saw red._

My mother was on the floor, bleeding, her clothing tattered. One of the men was pressing her to ground, trying to stop her struggles, while the other was standing a few from them, watching the other.

In retrospect, the fire could have been rage. Part of it was – how dare they touch my mother? Part of it was fear – what happened to mother? But all of it, was _love_ , pure and agonizing.

_Love._

I loved my mother, and all I could see was my mother until I saw _more_. The world changed, warped as I thought of how much I loved her and I needed to save her. Each second became two, then ten, then a hundred as I thought of how much I loved her.

**Love.**

I leapt at the standing man, who wasn't so much a man any more than a mess of swirling lights and colors, just like kaa-san was, and I took my rock and dove it straight into his chest and pushed with all my might.

We were falling, he and I. Me, my rock, and he were falling to the ground. I felt something warm and wet cover my hand as we fell, heard a gasp and a scream – my mother's.

I couldn't hear my mother. Her mouth was moving too slow. What was she saying? Why did I come back? Why was everything so slow? And so _colorful_. I pulled myself away from him as we landed, staring at her, at the man holding her down. Saburo with his huge biceps, his huge sausage fingers on my mother.

And for a minute, I could hear again.

"YAKUTO!"

The sounds of coughing and sputtering, more of the blood spilling out, but I paid him no mind, striding back as he laid there dying. I was waiting for Saburo – unsure of what to do.

"You little b..bitc.." He started, but then something entered his eyes than I never saw before. Never saw directed at me.

Fear.

He was afraid of me.

The slow feeling, the feeling of loving my mother came back and I grinned at him. And at her, but mother looked frightened too, it couldn't have been of me, of course. It was for me. She kept shaking her head at me, like she still wanted me to turn tail and run.

I couldn't. I am a kunoichi.

And kunoichi have stances. I shifted into the one from weeks ago immediately, preparing to fight. Mother looked confused. Saburo looked more frightened as I assumed it.

"T-those eyes…what are you?"

My eyes? I didn't understand what he meant. My eyes were black and commonplace.

Saburo must have been stupid as well as _so frustratingly slow_ to not see that.

"Stay back!" He got off Kaa-san, withdrawing his sword. It glinted at me, challenging me. It was no matter – a fool with a sword is nothing to a kunoichi with a rock. Even if he was five times my size, even if I didn't know what I was doing, I could beat him. I would beat him.

My _eyes_ told me so. And so before he could step back, like he wanted, I raised the sticky rock and threw it through the air. It was no kunai, no shuriken, and no senbon, but I propelled it anyway, just knowing that it would land where I wanted to.

It crashed into his skull, dead center between the eyes and he fell down. The world remained a jumble of sluggishness and colors, even as my mother got up, shaking. I felt myself be drawn into a hug. The feeling of bony limbs and the smell of tea reached my nostrils, and I breathed in deeply, noting how everything still felt so unhurried, unnatural.

_Love._

"Heiwa…how could..." My mother barely got out, her whole body quivering from her sobs. I leaned in, unsure of what to do know or why the world was still _so_ slow.

She let go of me abruptly and met my stare directly. I saw my mother as I had never seen her before, so clearly, but when I made continued to make eye contact she flinched, tearing her gaze away, and stood up to pick the man's sword. I walked over to see her tower over Saburo. She bent down to check something on his neck before taking the sword and quickly drawing it over his throat. Blood seeped out, but my mother didn't seem bothered by it in the slightest and suddenly it occurred to me that I forgot that my mother's childhood was spent surviving the bloodiest part of the Land of Lakes' Civil War, and that the region around Rain had seen the most bloodshed. My mother's birth village had been right across the lake from that village.

I followed her to the other body, wondering if this was the first time she'd done this sort of thing. Perhaps my mother had corpses with her name on them left back in the perpetually rainy part of this country. My mother quickly rifled through the other's pockets and then slit Yakuto's throat for good measure.

"No one can know." She said when I poked her, inquiring.

I shrugged, unsure of what she meant.

My mother sighed loudly and disappeared into the wagon for what must have been a minute but if felt _longer_. She returned holding a plain mirror from her bag.

"Take a look." She said. And I did.

It wasn't black eyes that met me. Not the color of coal, my hair, or a room at night when the candles were out.

They were brighter than the blood seeping out of the two men's bodies, but in some parts of the iris they looked just like it. And in some parts they were brighter, like some jewel. Mostly they were the color of the red ribbons I sometimes wore in my hair. And in the eyes was one black dot.

Those eyes, they were the same as Sasuke's, the same as Itachi's.

I blinked, unsure of what was happening. Why were my eyes like their eyes? Why was everything so slow? I tried to pull my chakra away from my face, where my head was beginning to throb, and then when I opened them again, everything was normal.

My eyes were black again. Exhaustion hit me immediately.

My mother was kneeling by Kiminori-san's body when I finally stopped staring at my eyes in the mirror. Now that the red eyes and whatever they had done to me were gone, I felt drained, like I wanted to sleep for days.

"He's only unconscious. Good, we can still get to town." She sighed deeply before turning her attention back to me, a very serious expression on her face.

"Heiwa, I need you to be honest with me. I'm not angry with you for coming back and…your eyes… but I need to know."

The ice was back. Now that the world was back to normal and I could think better, I suddenly understood that this was a conversation I had been dreading for over a year.

"I know that stance you did isn't something that comes naturally, I've seen it before, years ago back in the war." I averted my eyes from her prying scrutiny, instead looking at the dust. If I made no answer, perhaps she could be convinced that I didn't understand.

I hope.

Instead, her hands covered mine and tightened over them, attempting to draw my eyes back to her.

"Heiwa, please, I know you understand me." She pleaded with me.

I didn't want to, though. I had just saved her, right? Couldn't she just let this be? Weren't the strange eyes enough answer for her? Why did she have to ask it? Why couldn't Kaa-san just…

"I need to know who taught you to be a shinobi."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kogai - hairpins.
> 
> Jurou - colloquial, less polite and demeaning term for a prostitute.
> 
> Yujo - prostitute; more official and less demeaning.
> 
> Ichibuban - a Tokugawa period currency.
> 
> Ryo - same as above, but also the currency canonly used in Naruto. However, canon's money system makes no sense so you can discard that completely when this story discusses money.
> 
> Yeah, I said this chapter was important - this whole next arc is. Almost every you may question will be answered within the next three chapters of this story. That said, I'm unsure of when the next update is. School might start soon, so ideally, I'll still have some of January to post an update. My New Year's resolution, in regard to this story, is to have be close to chapter 20 by this time next year, which mean I'll probably be more than half-way done with it. At least, I want to get past the chapters I have planned out in detail.
> 
> So, I ask humbly, could you guys please leave a comment as a gift to me? Thank you so much in advance, I really would enjoy hearing people's thoughts on this chapter.
> 
> Happy New Year!


	7. VII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heiwa finds out the truth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

 

* * *

  **Seeking Peace**

**Chapter VII**

* * *

 

The incident in the road left me so exhausted that we were already in Saboten by the time I awoke, having slept for almost an entire day. My silence had frustrated mother, and she wasted no time in heading to the doctor while I waited, unwilling to escort her and get more questions from for my trouble.

Obviously I wasn’t going to answer her. She could guess well enough on her own – and did, naming Kojiro right in the beginning. I turned away before she began questioning me so I’m not sure if I gave it away that her guess was right, but I was sure Kojiro would be in for a row when we got back home.

Good. He could answer her, because I wasn’t going to, not as long as she kept secrets from me.

These eyes…

My father was a Uchiha, these eyes left no doubt but who was the important thing here… I understood perhaps mother was worried for me. Itachi, judging from my visions, was a monster. If he found about me, I’d be _dead_. Right?

And the visions were the worst of it all. Obviously they were connected to Sasuke and the Uchiha in general, and _maybe_ if I knew who my father was I’d understand why I was getting them.

I hoped.

* * *

 

“Heiwa, please, you can’t not talk to me forever.” Mother said from the other side of the swaying caravan. It was sunset, and we would probably make it to the Hovel by nightfall. Kaa-san hadn’t said anything about her doctor’s visit to me, not that I asked, and returned with a bag of some sort of medicine. I just ignored her, slept, and focused on my thoughts the best I could in the creaks of the swaying caravan.

Mother groaned, putting her hands to her face and rubbing her temples, all while glaring at me in irritation. I looked away again, not bother to show any reaction and keeping my face blank.

“Heiwa, you’re being ridiculous, you can’t ignore me like this.” She tried again, crawling closer. I turned around, facing a bag of feed and ignoring her.

“Ugh! You can’t be serious- Heiwa, if you don’t stop sulking and acting like a brat, I will forbid you to even see Kojiro, much less whatever continue you’ve been learning from him.” Mother raised her voice. I cringed, bringing my hands up to cover my ears so I could stop hearing her.

Mother groaned, and I could hear her bang her head against the caravan floor. I eased my hands, catching her whispers.

“Heiwa, I’m trying…” She said. “I don’t know how to deal with you like this, to deal with this…Can’t you just try and make this easier by not ignoring me?”

My mother was very young… not yet 21, having me a month before she turned sixteen. This time in the caravan was the first time I realized how, even though she was so old compared to me, young she was. How having me was probably unexpected.

I wondered why she did.

Mother sat up again, but didn’t say anymore to me. We sat in silence for hours, the clopping of hooves and the creaking of the wagon our only music, until the countryside I could see in the cracks of wagon’s walls began looking extremely familiar. We were almost there.

I eyed the exit, thinking of what would happen. It was late, mother would hopefully not disturb Kojiro’s night with accusations, instead she’d head to bed and creep out at dawn to forbid him from teaching me. I couldn’t let that happen, I know she’d completely neglect to mention my red eyes.

Mother didn’t know I knew I was an Uchiha, and because of my silence, she didn’t know Kojiro knew as well.

I wonder if the fact Kojiro was a shinobi frightened her too. Shinobi were the boogiemen of our tales, a bad-luck sign, and having lived through a civil war started by them, my mother was a civilian and had the same superstitions and views on them as the rest of the Hovel. I couldn’t leave this up to mother.

_I wouldn’t._

Mother was lying back on a bag of feed, looking through some papers she had bought in Saboten. I cast another brief look at the countryside. We were probably a forty-minute walk from the Hovel.

Less by chakra. I steadied myself, aware that this was a little dangerous and if it went wrong, I _would be in so much trouble_ , but I had to do this. Deep breath and –

I stood up and ran out to the exit. Mother looked up and sent me a look of fear, understanding too late what I was doing.

“Heiwa, don’-“

I ran out and jumped from the caravan, landing wobbly on my two feet.

“STOP THE WAGON, KIMINORI-SAN!” My mother screamed, head poking out of the caravan. It stopped but before my mother could leave it, I pushed off again, channeling chakra to my legs and running down the dirt road to the Hovel.

“HEIWA!” I could hear Kaa-san scream behind me, her shouts and yells getting fainter and fainter as I got farther.

What would have taken us forty minutes took me ten as I ran straight for Kojiro’s house. The moon was high up in the starry sky by the time I reached his yard, jumped over the fencing and sent the chickens sleeping in the yard squawking and shrieking. The noise must have alerted Kojiro that something was wrong, as he came bursting out on his porch immediately.

“Who the-…Heiwa?” I eyed him, panting from how hard I had to run… Using that much chakra…But I had to show him before Mother got there…

He came closer, dropping the knife he’d picked up along the way out of his house.

“Heiwa, what’s goin’ on?” Kojiro asked, concern quite plain on his face. “Where’s your mom? The caravan?”

I blinked and called chakra forth to my eyes, hoping this was the correct way of awakening it, opening them and taking the strange world that they showed. A world slower than our own, where every visual detail was seen in higher clarity, overwhelming my sight with the strange shining radiance of every living thing. Kojiro glowed brighter than my mother had, and more so than the men I’d defeated, appearing to me as a bright beacon more than a person.

He took a step back, shock etched on his facial features and mouth left hanging open.

“Y-you…that’s the… _shit_! Get inside!” He whispered, grabbing me and dragging me up the porch and into the kitchen. He placed me gently on one of his chairs, muttering to himself as he lit a match and then his wooden stove. Kojiro slammed the teapot on the burner none too gently before turning to me.

“Who else saw you? What the hell happened, Heiwa?” I moved the chair closer to the table and set my elbows on it, signing as I did so.

**“Two men attacked. Hurt Kaa-san, now dead.”** I signed the best I could… Kojiro frowned and got out a notebook and pencil, throwing them down at the table. I picked them up and began writing.

“Two men, highway robbers, stopped us on the way to Saboten. Tried to steal and hurt my mother. Mother wanted me to run but I came back and these eyes happened. I killed them both. Mom knows about the eyes and guessed about the training. I ran away from her before she could get back.”

Kojiro picked up the notebook and read it once I was finished, joining me at the table. He set the book down and gave a deep sigh as he did so.

“I never thought you’d get those eyes this young… It’s called the Sharingan. Remember I said I could sense you were part of a clan? The Uchiha? They’d use eyes like that durin’ battle, I’m sure you noticed some of the changes.”

The Sharingan. The mirror wheel eye?

“I don’t know the specifics of gettin’ those eyes but the one time I saw an Uchiha get them, back in the First War, her boyfriend or teammate was ‘bout to be killed. We decided to retreat, when she just charged in, eyes blazin’, and knocked everyone outta her way. Didn’t really realize what happened until later. Whatever triggers it, it probably has to be stressful.”

I nodded, since I was very stressed when I awakened it. The sight of mother laying on the ground…

The water behind us bubbled, and Kojiro went to quickly turn it off. I peered out the window, wondering when Kaa-san was going to arrive. I didn’t hear the sound of a horse trotting down the dirt yet. Kojiro got back my attention by placing a cup full of some brown liquid that wasn’t tea in front of me. It smelled amazing.

“Hot cocoa…I keep a secret stash and you look like you needed some.” I mouth my thanks and sip it, letting the smooth richness and warmth of the drink wash down my throat.

“So, your mother knows you’re bein’ trained in ninjutsu? She already guessed it’s me, right?” Kojiro asked.

I nodded, sipping my cocoa and observing his reaction. It was Kojiro who would best manage to settle down my mother, after all.

“Well,” The old man groaned over his cup. “This is definitely not how I wanted to have that conversation, Heiwa, but I guess we have-“

“We? Don’t bring my daughter into this.” The front door opened, letting in the sound of shrieking chickens and my mother into the room. She looked over the room, obviously the first person in Kojiro’s house besides me, and her glance landed on some of the older, Uzu artifacts before she coldly regarded Shishou.

Kojiro immediately got up.

“Suiren-sa-”

“Heiwa, get up. We’re going home.” I shook my head, remaining seated and choosing to instead sip on my cocoa.

“Come now, Suiren-san, it’s no good to be hasty. Pleas-”

“I didn’t come here to talk, _shinobi_ -san.” Mother bit out, voice full of venom as the word ‘shinobi’ rolled out. “We shoulda guessed, with that wooden leg and how standoffish you are. A nuke-nin, of all things.”

“Can’t be a missing ninja of a country that don’t exist anymore, Suiren-san.” A wide, fake grin spread tiself over Kojiro’s face, and his wrinkles deepened. “Anyway, I really do think we need to discuss Heiwa’s future.”

“Her future?” Mother laughed coldly. “You mean the fact you enticed a little girl and showed her ‘cool’ things in order to train her to be a paid killer? A lonely, crippled old man like yourself…probably wanted to relive your glory days so you used _my_ daughter to do so.”

My eyes widened, and Kojiro’s smile slid off his face.

“If you think insulting me will make me back off,” He spoke, voice rough and in the same strange dialect I heard him use when we spotted the Suna-nin a year back. “You’re mistaken. If anything, I’m saving her – or did you want me to condemn an Uchiha child to her death by letting her go untrained and unprotected.”

Mother glared at me before sneering at Kojiro. “So she told you about the eyes.”

Kojiro gave out a round of harsh, grating laughter. “Told me? No, no, Suiren-san, any shinobi who knows what to look for can guess what clan her father’s from. And in the case of sensors like me, we don’t even need to guess.”

Mother shook, her eyes darting towards the exit. “S-sensor?”

Kojiro leaned over the table to stare my mother dead on in the face. “Yes, sensors. Didn’t hear ‘bout that in your civilian gossip, did ya? A good sensor can trace chakra signatures to ancestry, and anyone who’s got a whiff of Uchiha could tell you that right there is one of their _bastards._ ” He pointed to me, smiling angrily. “And so I trained her, you know, instead of allowin’ her to remain unprotected and defenseless when there are hundreds of people willin’ to do anythin’ to get at her and her eyes.”

“Don’t fool yourself, Kojiro-san, you’ve ruined the only chance she has to remain hidden!”

“And what, let her be killed? From what Heiwa said, it sounds like you owe your life to her kunoichi trainin’!”

“I would gladly die if she had remained unremarkable and far from anyone’s notice!” Mother screamed out.

“No, you would have died and she would have gone on the black market, only to be snatched up and sent to the breedin’ pens of Kumogakure! But you’re not worried ‘bout other shinobi, are you, Suiren?”

Mother closed her mouth, her whole frame shaking from anger.

“Distance and a tiny village off the map won’t protect her from Uchiha Itachi, Suiren.” Kojiro spoke again, softer now. Mother made a strangled noise in the back of her throat at the moment he said ‘Itachi’.

“ _He’ll_ never get her! I’ll hide her!”

Kojiro heaved a sigh before sitting down and rubbing at his wooden leg.

“If Itachi ever found ‘bout her, he’d be here sooner than you can say ‘hide’, Suiren. The only thing that could help Heiwa is a village, a village unwillin’ to lose an asset like an Uchiha girl.”

Mother started laughing again. “A-a village? Like that worked out well for his family! He killed them all anyway, and you think a village could stop him from killing her? They’ll deliver her to the gates to be rid of him!”

“Itachi’s massacre of the Uchiha was unexpected. The element of surprise is a one-time advantage. A threat you’re aware of is easier to manage than a surprise threat from home. A village could shield her, train her until she’s able to surpass him.”

I felt my hands go slack…Surpass him? Did shishou just say what I thought he did? He wanted me to surpass that monster? Who killed his family?

“Surpass him? You want her to _surpass_ him? Heiwa can never do that!” Mother shouted. “You’d be raising a lamb for slaughter!”

“Your daughter might become one of best shinobi of her time!” Kojiro snapped. “And its kill or be killed for her. She won’t have a moment’s rest if she grows up with Itachi alive! It’s either her or him, and I want to give her a fightin’ chance!”

Mother broke out in laughter once more, and for a second I was worried that she might go into another seizure, with how hysterical she seemed.

“You want her to kill him? No, she can’t! You can’t ask that of her!”

Kojiro looked as calm as an evening in the still canyons as he took a swig of his cocoa, eyeing my mother nonchalantly.

“Is it because he’s her father?”

All became quiet. Mother stopped the frenetic laughter and her frightened eyes landed on me.

_No._

Her lip trembled again.

No. He _can’t-_

“She will never meet him.” Mother whispered, to me more than Kojiro. “Itachi doesn’t know of her. And he never will.”

I slammed my fists on the table, grabbing my notepad and angrily scribbling out a question. I need to _know_ , I _needed_ confirmation.

I was so tired of these things being kept from me. I was so tired of Kaa-san pretending nothing was wrong.

“Who is my father?”

I raised the page with the question up for my mother to see. She looked back at me, in tears.

“A man you’ll never meet.” And mother was gone, running out of the kitchen, and leaving us behind. When the wooden door slammed and the chickens finally stopped squawking, Kojiro got up from the table and walked over to a bookshelf. He retrieved a small thin book and placed it in front of me.

“That’s a recent bingo book. Look under Konoha.” I opened it up, noting that it was really recent, only printed out a few months before. I flipped until I noticed the leaf symbol that signaled Konohagakure’s shinobi, stopping and carefully turning page by page until I saw him. He stared back at me, younger than he was in the vision I had seen him in, but much older than the given age for him the photo. He was only thirteen in that? He looked much older.

“Six years ago, the Uchiha clan in Konohagakure were murdered by the clan’s heir, a prodigy named Uchiha Itachi.” Kojiro said to me. I stared at him, looking over those features I had noted last year while dreaming. Sasuke’s features came close, but that eye shape was different, the lashes elongated. The lower lip bigger than his brother’s, the nose more prominent.

Just like mine.

“I didn’t want to believe it at first, since thirteen goin’ on fourteen is on the young side to be visiting prostitutes…but then the new Bingo book came out and listed his partner.” I read part of the entry about associates, saying he traveled with a man named Hoshigaki Kisame. I raised my eyebrow at Kojiro, unsure of what he meant.

“A couple years ago, Daichi wrote me that Hoshigaki Kisame had been spotted visiting the yukaku in Saboten. I checked my letters for the date, and around eighth months after I got that letter, your mother arrived, holdin’ you.”

I looked back at the teenager on the book, his eyes like black holes. He didn’t look like a thirteen-year-old in the photo, but there was youth in his face, and something softer that had been missing in the vision.

Itachi. Sasuke. Mother. Saburo and Yakuto. This was…

This was too much.

I burst into tears over the page, feeling like some dam I’d built up just shattered and allowed all my feelings to flood me. Instantly, Kojiro drew me up into a hug, but that only made me sob harder. Rough hands patted the back of my head as I cried into his shoulder.

It took a couple minutes to stop my tears, and Kojiro set me back down gently.

“Want me to walk you home?” He asked. I cast a glance towards the door and shook my head.

**“I don’t want to.”** I signed, deciding that I didn’t want to deal with mother tonight.

“That’s fine,” Kojiro agreed. “I’ll go put up the couch for you, wait here.”

He left me alone with the bingo book, still opened to my father’s face. My father.

No.

Uchiha Itachi was a former client of my mother’s, nothing more. And he was dangerous.

I felt something stick in my throat as I imagined him coming after with those gleaming red eyes, after the Hovel, and anger replaced my earlier bewilderment and sorrow. He wouldn’t come close to hurting them.

I had the epiphany that changed my life over a cup of lukewarm cocoa that night.

_‘No,’_ I thought as I was laid to bed by Kojiro, the uncomfortable couch cushions keeping me awake, _‘Itachi’s death was long overdue.’_

It all made sense now, these visions. I understood now that some higher purpose was helping, guiding me along the right path. And why they were centered on my paternal family, on Sasuke. I was meant to help him.

And so I swore to myself that night that I’d find him when he was ready. Surely the visions would tell me when he was ready, when I needed to be ready.

I’d become as strong as I could be in the meantime, regardless of what mother wanted. I was doing this for her, anyway, so she didn’t have to fear for me, or spend her life running away from the mistake she made by having me.

And when it was time, my uncle and I would kill Itachi.

* * *

The smell of eggs frying woke me up. I groaned as I sat up, sore from Kojiro’s lumpy couch. Shishou was in the kitchen, attired in an apron as he stood over the burner.

I raised my eyebrow at how relaxed my teacher looked. He was usually alert and dressed normally when I came around for lessons, except for the slippers, and this was my teacher in pajamas and an apron. I knocked on the wall to get his attention and he turned away from the pan, giving me a small smile.

“Mornin’, Heiwa. You sleep any last night?” I nodded, frowning down at the horrible couch. Next time, I’d prefer the floor.

“Nice to know someone did,” He muttered and turned back to the stove. “Breakfast’ll be ready in two. Go wash up.” I tiptoed over to the sink, hefting myself on top of the counter before cleaning my hands and face.

Kojiro eyed me with caution, and I noticed the black bags under his eyes, and just how tired he looked. He looked as bad as I felt. My vengeance-filled thoughts and dreams did little to improve my mood from last night or the past few days, really. I felt like I was somewhere between feeling too much and feeling nothing at all.

I didn’t like it. Not at all.

The sizzling of the pan combined with Kojiro turning off the stove told me it was time to eat, so I hopped off the counter and back to my chosen seat. A minute later, I stared down at a bowl of rice with a fried egg and some daikon on top, feeling slightly impressed at Kojiro’s cooking. He must have been feeding himself for years. Rei had made very clear her belief that ‘as an old bachelor, Kojiro’s house must be a pigsty and he must survive on canned food’, and I guess I never thought much about Kojiro outside my lessons, besides the strangeness of his origins. It was strange, breakfasting with him.

I broke the yolk, watching it fall down rather than eating.

“What’s the matter? Not hungry?” Kojiro asked, once more seated across from me. I shook my head and began slowly eating, wondering why I felt like this. Kojiro noticed.

“You alright?” He asked.

I shook my head again.

“Of course you ain’t,” the old man agreed with me gruffly. “You just had some really bad days. Listen, I know you may be broken up about those robbers you fought-”

I shook my head again, harder this time, sending my hair flying.

**“I don’t. They had to die.”** I set my face to look as serious as I could make it while signing, trying to convey how much I believed in that.

“Had to, eh? What makes you think that?” Kojiro eyed me thoughtfully.

Fingers around my mother’s throat made me think that, huge bulking bodies threatening and leering at her made me think that. I had little remorse for killing Saburo and Yakuto – if I hadn’t, I’d be short a mother, even if she wasn’t my favorite person right this second, that loss… I didn’t want to imagine it. I didn’t know how to express all of that in signs, so I just clarified it simply.

**“It was the right thing to do.”** Finished with my concise explanation, I returned to eating my breakfast.

Kojiro leaned back, frowning at me. “We don’t always know what’s right, Heiwa. And it’s okay to not feel much ‘bout what happened, either…Look, Heiwa, I need to tell you about yesterday…” He broke off.

I continued eating, occasionally pausing to look up at him to show that I was waiting as he struggled to get his words out.

“The stuff I said, about Itachi, forget it, okay? You ain’t obligated to do anythin’ ‘bout him or ever meet him. I still think Amegakure’s the best shot you have, but as to Itachi, well, we’ll deal with how to make sure you escape his notice, alright?”  I swallowed another spoonful of daikon, wondering if this was what made Kojiro lose sleep last night.

**“No, I think you were right.”** I signed to him. **“I looked up the Uchiha last year, in the library. I know what he did. Killing him is the right thing do.”**

My shishou looked severely uncomfortable at that. “Heiwa, it’s the right thing to do, but it ain’t somethin’ you should be worried about. Itachi’s an S-class criminal.”

**“But you said it’s kill or be killed-”**

“I know what I said last night, but _damn it_ , your mother made me angry and I wasn’t thinkin’ right!” Kojiro shouted. “You’re five, Heiwa! You outta not wetted your first kunai, you outta not have those eyes! You can be amazin’ one day but bein’ hasty will only get you killed, and I… _can’t_ watch you go off to your death, girl…”

There were tears at the corner of his eyes.

I looked away, unsure of how to react. I had to make sure Itachi never came after me or my family (Kojiro included), but here Kojiro and Kaa-san were both telling me not to, and yet I wouldn’t be safe with him alive. I couldn’t live my life in hiding! What was I supposed to do, not use the red eyes for the rest of my life?

I shook my head again and tapped the table to get Kojiro’s attention again.

**“I won’t until you feel I’m ready. That I can promise.”**

Kojiro rubbed at his eyes. “Bah, foolish thing! You might never be!”

I said nothing, not wanting to argue what ifs because it had to happen at some point. And I was sure Kojiro didn’t know about Sasuke.

As I was about to finish my bowl, a sharp rap on the door brought our attention to the outside, where Rei was waiting, looking unpleased.

“Oh, wonderful, I’ll be gettin’ a tongue-lashin’ from Rei-san, I suppose.” Kojiro groaned while opening the door for her. “Mornin’ to ya, Rei-san.”

Rei snorted while entering, looking around. “It’s cleaner than I thought, must be that shinobi trainin’.”

Kojiro gave a wry smile. “I like to think of it as good manners and breedin’ myself.” Rei harrumphed again before her gaze fell on me.

“Heiwa, it’s time to go home. I know you’re mad at your ma, but you can’t bother Kojiro like this.”

“She ain’t botherin’ me, she’s my student.”

“And she has a home.” Rei answered sharply. “Come on now, it’s not like we can really stop you from seeing this ol’ codger anyway. Though why anyone would seek your company, Kojiro-jii, I can’t say.”

“Ah, you just broke this old man’s heart. Go now, Heiwa.” He said. I shook my head, instead reaching for my pencil and the notebook. Quickly, I scribbled out a question for Rei. Kojiro took it from me and read it aloud:

“What do you know about my father?” 

Rei’s lips thinned and she crossed her arms. “How much did Suiren tell you?”

“His name, and then ran out.”

“Figures.” Rei sighed. “Well, I don’t know all that much, but I guess shinobi like you know what’s he done, right? You probably filled Heiwa in.”

“Yeah, she knows about the clan.” I nodded, curious.

“Like I said, I don’t know too much, only what Suiren would tell me. But we get shinobi customers around the Yukaku, and we keep quiet, unless someone pays well for some info. Especially with bigshots. I heard through the grapevine that two ‘scary’ shinobi visited Miyu’s, and a month later saw your mother lookin’ all frightened. We were friends back then, and so she told me that she had to entertain a scary shinobi, moment’s notice. She, ah, wasn’t sober when she did that.”

Kojiro frowned.

“Suiren was hittin’ the pipe pretty hard back then. She was young too, fifteen. Anyhow, she said her client was young, like her, and…well, reluctant.”

Kojiro raised his eyebrows as Suiren went on.

“I don’t know what she did, we’re taught to make the clients comfortable, and if nothin’, just talk. She wouldn’t tell me anythin’ ‘bout it, but I think they just talked at first – she mentioned him not bein’ in the right state of mind. I think she didn’t know who he was until she realized she got pregnant. That’s when she got scared and wanted to go into hidin’.” Rei sighed.

“I don’t know much more about it, only that man killed his whole family at the age of thirteen. Sounds like some demon possessed him, if you ask me.”

Kojiro chuckled. “Sometimes demons and curses are better alternatives than realizin’ monsters like Uchiha Itachi are completely human.”

I walked over to Rei, aware that this was all she probably knew or wanted to say in front of Kojiro, and that it was time to go. Rei put a hand on my shoulder.

“Well, we’ve dallied here long enough, and I think your ma wants to see you. We’ll be off, Kojiro-san.”

I bowed, thanking him the best I could, before taking Rei’s hand and steering her out and through the yard. Looking back, I could see Kojiro watching us from his window, uneasiness plain on his face. The hand holding mine gripped tighter as we got further away.

“Your ma’s not happy, but for what it’s worth, Heiwa-chan, I’m proud that you saved her.” I looked up to see a small smile on Rei’s face.

“This shinobi stuff is beyond me, or your ma, but…your ma was in some real trouble back there. So she ain’t upset you saved her…we’re just scared you’ll grow up too fast.”

“Just give her time.” Rei said, opening the door of our home. Mother, seated on the table with a few new pill bottles, said nothing, only stared at me through red-rimmed eyes.

“Well, she’s home. Anythin’ to say, Suiren?” Rei asked. I looked at her, noting the bags under those eyes.

“No,” Kaa-san rose up from the table. “I said all I wanted to last night.” She exited quickly, slamming the door to a bedroom and leaving me alone with a stunned Rei.

I tugged on Rei’s sleeve, unsure how to even react to such a rebuff from my mother. Perhaps, our roles from yesterday had inadvertently changed. I just hoped this wasn’t a permanent change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally a one shot about Itachi breaking down and crying after killing his family, I want to write that because I refused to believe he kept it all inside. But then I started brainstorming the woman he'd confess, or cry in front of (I wanted this to be in a brothel), and my mind just came undone with this strong teenage girl who walked across a country to flee a war (among other things that will be revealed in upcoming chapters). Then my mind ran away with - what if Itachi had a kid? This was summer '14 when I thought of it, and things started to come into place. I finished the first two chapters in early August, coinciding with Heiwa's birthdate.
> 
> I understand the answer is not one many wanted, and I'll address a few things here:
> 
> 1\. There's more explanations, explanations that can come both soon and towards the end of this story. This is a story about family most of all, and we will come back to Itachi and Heiwa constantly.
> 
> 2\. As to the age thing - one of things that I wanted to put in my one-shot was a kind of 'regretful' tone. I know a couple of people who lost their virginity at twelve (and one earlier) and regret it wholeheartedly, with one friend telling me that she was using it to cope with problems. SO it's far from unrealistic.
> 
> 3\. Another point, since the publishing of this story, Itachi has been revealed to have a 'love interest' (i haven't read the translation, but more a girl who had a serious crush on him than his girlfriend. this is getting an anime, apparently) and Obito did mention something about a lover. While I have my own views on Itachi and his ability to maintain relationships when his world and being centers so much on Sasuke, sex is a different matter.
> 
> 4\. I FULLY UNDERSTAND IF PEOPLE WANT TO STOP READING THIS STORY. Just saying, I get it. But to those who will stay and wait for more explanations, to see if we do meet Itachi, I give my uttermost thanks. Thank you.
> 
> And now, I leave you to commenting, if you wish to. I'm certain some of you have strong views on this chapter, and I ask you share them with me, no matter how negative.


	8. VIII

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heiwa navigates a chilly atmosphere at home.

* * *

**Seeking Peace**

**Chapter VIII**

* * *

"Damn dust." Rei muttered quietly, the sound of a wet rag sliding up and down glass drowning out her crabby mumbling. I looked up from my doodles and watched her wrestle with the ever-increasing dust in the house.

"I wipe it all down once and a day later it's back," She groaned. "Every damn fall…"

Over a month had passed since my mother and I had returned to the Hovel, since my father's name was revealed to me. Specifically, today was September the Twentieth, an important day in our household.

Rei huffed, throwing the rag into a bucket filled with well water, and crossed her arms as she turned back to me.

"She awake yet?"

I shrugged, hopping off the chair and opening the door to our bedroom to peek inside. The lump obscured by layers of bedding hadn't moved since the last time I checked. I carefully closed the door so I wouldn't wake her up and shook my head up at Rei.

Rei sighed and returned to her counters, where a sticky date-filled roll topped with poppy seeds awaited, its steam still wafting through the air. My stomach rumbled from merely looking at it, and I huffed out impatiently, unhappy that mother was taking so long to get up.

The past month hadn't been kind to the household; my mother was cold, even to me. She scarcely hugged me, and avoided Kojiro whenever she could. She didn't try and stop me from leaving to go visit him, and Rei just pretended I was merely going for my normal lessons, so there was no discussion of my kunoichi training or any acknowledgment that something had changed. There were no questions about my day, not much talking really.

Visiting Kojiro had been my only respite from the chilly atmosphere back home, and I made an effort to prolong my stay there. Kojiro was wise enough not to probe at the reason for my behavior, and instead treated me to tea and snack breaks.

I just wanted my mother back.

The feeling of numbness I experienced right after the incident had mostly subsided, though coupled with the strangeness of home, it did result in me spending a few nights silently sobbing into my pillow.

The door creaked, opening and letting in my mother. She cast a tired glance over the kitchen and sighed, "I thought I told you I didn't want no celebration this time around, Rei."

Rei, busy at the counters, scoffed. "You're not old enough to not care about your birthday." Suiren looked down at me and I attempted a smile, flipping over the sheet of paper I'd drawn for her in a discreet manner.

"I suppose it'd be a _waste_ then…"

"That's the spirit! Now come on, wash your face and hands!"

Dark brown eyes encircled by deep circles of darkened flesh – was it from lack of proper sleep or illness? – finally found my paper and I saw a brief questioning look in her face before she attempted a tiny brief smile that made her look even more tired than usual.

The moment barely lasted as Rei interrupted it by slamming down a serving plate with the sweet jujube roll cut up for us – a thick, middle piece topped with a small lit sparkler that emitted little pops of light and sound. My mother sighed loudly.

"Rei, come on, this is real-…"

"Stop sighin' and lean in so you can blow them out when we stop singin'." Rei, of course didn't mean I'd be singing, but I rolled my shoulders up anyway, moving to keep my fingers on the table as Rei began to sing the Birthday song we had as I tried to tap along.

_"Four seasons come and gone,"_ Rei wasn't a good singer by any means, especially with a rasp caused by a former smoking habit, but there was something soothing about hearing it, especially when she was so close I could feel her voice vibrate throughout her body, near feel it myself. _"Come and gone, soon four more – through winter snows, spring blooms, summer heats, and fall leaves, come and gone, and four more for you."_

As Rei's voice reverberated throughout our cozy, warm kitchen, I kept an eye on Kaa-san, her long dark brown hair skimming the table top. It was duller than usual, the wave in it gone due to excess oils and general unkemptness. She wasn't beautiful, not the made-up beauty I loved seeing on her on those days we dressed up – even without her paints, laughing with her mouth open wide so I can see her ruined teeth, there was something lovely about Suiren. But something in the past month had robbed my mother of her beauty. Was it illness? Was it me?

_"As the earth spins, you shall grow,"_ Rei continued, nudging Kaa-san to follow along. She shook her head, making the sparkler flicker even more and looked down, away. _"And as the seasons fly, you shall too – come and gone. May the seasons change, and you be there to se-…"_

" _Stop."_

"Come an..."

"Stop!" Kaa-san yelled out, slamming her fists down on the table, frightening both Rei and I. My mother stood up, shaking, and I could see tears collect at the corner of her eyes as she looked down at us. One second later, she was back in the bedroom, the door slamming shut, leaving only the sound of sparklers behind.

_"…Come and go."_ Rei whispered, blowing them out before giving me my slice. We ate in almost complete silence, ignoring the fact that my mother's sobbing could just barely be heard in the next room.

* * *

As I mentioned earlier, Kojiro was my escape – even if my training got…worse. No longer was it just dodging objects like I had for the past year. Finally, he took it on himself to get physical with me.

Whereas his hands would be signing instructions for me, now he was fighting me. For all my fear of blunt training shuriken, Kojiro's knuckles hurt even more, especially since we stopped keeping up pretense for Mother and Rei. Perhaps that spurred her resentment even further, but I gave it little thought, determined to get better.

"Focus!" He shouted, so close that I winced from the volume and returned into my stance, looking up at him. "Alright, we're doin' another drill. I'll tell you what move to make as I attack, you be ready and keep to form."

His russet eyes found mine for a second before he sped off and began attacking me – mostly leg attacks because of my height. Taijutsu, he said, was fundamental for me to learn before I went to Ame. For one thing, he didn't like the way Amegakure's academy taught it, and I had to get used to opponents bigger than me beforehand. After all, my 'enemies' were better, and bigger.

"Block!" I block a kick he sent, moving quickly away from the strike zone of a follow up.

"Parry!"

"Dodge!"

And on and on, until I got the movements down. He'd play sly with me often, trying to trip me up because I couldn't blank out on these moments. Unfortunately, my attention would wander elsewhere and lo and behold, a kick to my shin, or a punch to my shoulder. Five minutes later, and I was eating dust again, looking up at Kojiro with a completely dissatisfied look on my face.

He crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head, "I know what you're thinkin', girl, and the answer is still no."

I huffed and began signing back furiously.

" **Not fair! I go so much faster when it's on and I can't keep up with you like this so why don't you let me use it so I can learn this faster!"**

"No, Heiwa, and that's an order!" My shishou raised his voice before walking over to me and crouching down to look me eye to eye. "Listen here. That Sharingan of yours' ain't some little cheat code or password to being a good ninja. It's a tool that you use when appropriate, and if you can't do this without it, you're only improvin' on bad skills. I get it makes you react faster, but when you can react to this without it, then you can use it. What did I tell you about people who overuse and rely on their bloodlines?"

I sighed, shoulders slumping.

" **They… end up getting killed the moment their bloodline becomes a handicap."** I signed back in answer.

"That's right. You'll use that Sharingan of yours', but you have to be an actual ninja, not using the stuff I taught you and compensatin' for everythin' else by seeing things quicker and predictin' everythin'."

I turn away, sulking. As much as I understood Kojiro's words, he didn't understand the feeling of using my bloodline. It was…beautiful. The world was brighter, bursting with light – energy it was, chakra. And then reacting to people while using it was amazing. I could…predict the tiniest movements just by looking at people. All those split second facial expressions, all those tiny gestures people thought were unnoticeable – I could see them. And when Kojiro fought me, suddenly I just knew what to do.

I felt myself a... a… master of time when I used it.

The urge to use it and just copy down the movements while reacting to them in real time and faster, it was so great – always there, in the back of my mind. Using the Sharingan felt so natural, so good.

I turn my head up at him, widening my eyes and sticking out my bottom lip, an expression I knew sometimes worked when I wanted Kojiro to have mercy on me. He shook his head.

"Come on, more drills and then…. if you really want it, I'll let you use it for kunai… But really, Heiwa, your kekkai genkai ain't some game."

True to his word, sometime later… I was flying.

The kunai flew at me, the shuriken too. Rocks. So much projectiles, but all I could see was color – vivid, bright, and I dodge each one, feeling like some wind spirit. Time took me by the hand and laughed with me as we spun out of the way of each one – even if Kojiro was just going slow. It felt more like a game than dodging had been, felt more like a dance. I could afford to be fluid and graceful, like mother when dancing. I could afford to do more like spins or flips because it wasn't like normal, where I'd be too busy trying to survive each little hit.

The cliffs looked so beautiful too, empty just for Kojiro and I. As I jumped up, pushing chakra to my feet to make me rise higher and flipped in mid-air, the huge cloudless sky imprinted itself into my mind, so intensely – one of the reasons I loved the Sharingan because I could remember oh so clearly. But then, as I returned to land, my graceful landing was spoiled by another sight.

The wide grin slid off my face as I landed, seeing my mother coming up behind Kojiro, looking at me. I could see her very clearly even if she was far off – another power of these eyes – and her (heart-broken) expression at my elation, her tears at my joy and triumph.

' _Kaa-san.'_   I mouthed at her as all the shuriken and kunai I'd been dodging fell around us and Kojiro turned back to look at her.

Kaa-san looked so small, so frail in that moment, a lone speck of black and white amongst the orange and yellow of the canyons and the bright cyan of the sky. It took me a moment to realize I frightened her. There was fear on her face, and it hadn't been shown to me when I saved her from the robbers. She put a hand to her mouth, wincing back tears as I walked closer, unsure and feeling clumsy and awful all of a sudden as the red bled from my eyes, returning them to the black they'd always been.

"Suiren-san…" Kojiro softly said as my mother shook his head at him.

"What have you…" She said, voice trembling. "What have you done to her? She's…that's not a child's…"

"She's always been like that." Kojiro said, rather sharply. "Always under your nose. I know it's hard to see her like that, but you have to stop thinkin' her as just 'your baby' and start thinkin' of her as another person."

"She's five." Kaa-san said, hoarsely.

"Doesn't make her less of a person. There are kids younger than her already fightin' wars, and there always will be. She's had more of a childhood than they ever will, Suiren, so why don't you stop ignorin' your daughter when she so loves you!"

"Does she?" Kaa-san asked.

My hands drop down to my sides as I eye my mother with horror. What sort…

I didn't understand. How could Kaa-san think I do not love her? I did! I did! Love was in every thought of her. She was my mother so how could…

I began taking more steps to her, my own eyes filling with tears as I spread my hands out, hoping for a hug. I wanted to show Kaa-san that, yes, I loved her, no matter how many birthday parties she ruined, no matter how many times I found her passed out, no matter what – she'd always be…

"I feel like I never knew my own child." She says, before turning and running off before I could reach her. I run after her, no chakra in my legs, no Sharingan in my eyes, just outstretched hands at my mother's ever distant form. My short legs only carry me as far as the edge of the poppy fields before I lose sight of her, and I collapse to my knees, crying. If only I had a voice to call out to her… if only I could _speak_ , make her listen….

A calloused hand lands on my shoulder and I look up to see Kojiro, crying along with me. In his embrace I find the warmth and love I was reaching for, but it doesn't fill up this new hole in my heart. It doesn't make the world brighter as my mother used to.

And, as I am carried back home to the Hovel, I think about how I'd give any time with the Sharingan, just to have her love me again.

* * *

I never spoke of what happened on the cliffs, just went about my days clinging to Rei more than usual as my mother continued to isolate herself. Looking back now, even back then, there were signs for the reason my mother was hiding from us, but a five year-old distraught with the thought that her mother doesn't love her couldn't catch them.

I never realized my mother's medicine had not kicked in until October the fifth, when my mother, as we were setting the wash outside to dry – despite Rei groaning about dust, collapsed into the ground, heaving a mixture of mucus, blood, and some other unknown bodily fluid.

"Suiren!"

Rei dropped her end of the linen, leaving me to try and catch all the fabric in my arms as she ran to make sure Kaa-san was alright. Suiren was retching there on the ground, doubled-over and shivering, miserably trying to push Rei away from her.

"N-uh-noo." She gasped out, barely getting the words out. Rei shook her head, gripping my mother's shoulder before hooking her arm under hers and trying to get mother to stand up.

"What about your medicine? Haven't you been usin' it?"

"A-and who said it'll-l work otherwise?" Kaa-san shot back, the remains of bile dribbling down her chin as she managed to be held up, raising her head to look dead at me. I looked back, too afraid of what I'd just seen.

"Suiren if not, it means you'll waste away, just like-"

"The other dead whores in the district, right!" We both winced at the tone – I'd never heard my mother use that word before. "So, I'll waste away, we knew it was goin' to happen!"

No.

Suiren pushed a wide-eyed Rei away, coughing sharply as she did so.

"If I'm goin' to die, I'm goin' to die, and that's that!"

No. No. _No_.

Just as mother turns to stomp back into the house, I run to her, sick of the distance between us. I spare nary a thought for the clean linen I dropped to the ground, instead hugging my mother as far up as I could comfortably reach, wrapping my arms around her thighs. I could smell the foul smell of whatever just expelled from her, but despite the acridity stinging my nose, my grip only tightened. I was done with this…period of anger and resentment, done watching my mother…act like anything but. Perhaps it was startling to have that thought, that Kaa-san wasn't acting like herself, or how I wanted her to be. Funnily enough, I could recognize she had the same thoughts about me - mother-daughter expectations shattered.

"Heiwa…" She said, finally, after a moment of looking at me. I unfurl my arms and take out my notepad, writing my thoughts done. Rei stood off, watching us silently as my mother read through my words.

Years removed from it, I sometimes wonder to myself whether we love our parents. Familial love is not a chosen bond, the one bond given to you at birth. So few choose to break them – and when broken down, it's a thing of chemicals flood the brain, recognizing kin. It begs the question whether we love our parents, and do our parents love us – or just the idea of us. Suiren of Mizumi no Kuni chose to have the child of an extremely dangerous missing-nin because she wanted love more than anything, a real love, not the promises whispered in her ear during her nightly duties. Someone who saw and felt that the sun rose and set on her shoulders. A child. Someone who would undo her mistakes.

I love my mother. I always will, to my own dying breath.

Still, I wonder if she truly loved me.

The crinkling of notepaper was not the only answer to the question I posed in the notepad. My mother stepped aside, walking into the doorway before turning back to look at me.

"When I am gone, take some of my ashes to what's left of my village one day, on the banks of Awaumi."

That was her answer. Rei and I looked at each other and within the moment we understood one thing; Kaa-san was going to die soon. The door slammed shut, leaving me to think about the birthday party a few weeks back.

Four seasons come and go, but my mother won't live to see them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp... Get ready for some answers next chapter. Due to the length and overall importance of chapter nine, it'll take a few weeks for a good product to come out, and it's such an important chapter I'd love to give it some extra work. Speaking of, once this arc is finished (post chapter ten), I'll post an 'Arc guide' as a chapter and go back and edit some small things. Nothing structural, more things like trying to make the damn 'Dusty' accent consistent (it'll be a nightmare once I start introducing others), and grammar and style mistakes in general.
> 
> Anyway, here's my question to my reviewers: what genre(s) do you think this story was inspired by? Musically and style-wise, there are two genres of film and literature that I very much draw inspiration from. I think I leave enough hints for the main one in the setting but I'm curious if I'm really obvious about it. Another hint: one of my favorite directors, Tarantino, has dabbled in both. Let me know in your reviews and see you in a couple weeks.


	9. IX

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How cold the world gets...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be posted two weeks ago. But as I sat down to edit and post it, I got a call that changed my life and now, once more, I post this after what seems like a lifetime (every time I post a chapter, I go through massive life changes). I cannot speak much on it - I am so weary now, but all I can say is that I wrote this chapter before I felt an ounce of pain that Heiwa feels - and now posting it, it seems all I can feel. And now, this story is dedicated to someone, someone who never read it no matter how many times I printed it out for him and gave it, or sent pdfs by email - so when my own times comes I can hand him the whole thing, complete.
> 
> So this is for you, Mike, a best friend unlike any other.
> 
> Warning: This chapter contains disturbing content (the contents of which I rather not spoil). If you are very sensitive to content like that, please reconsider reading this story.

* * *

**Seeking Peace**

**Chapter IX**

* * *

 

“If the rice is too cloudy, you need to wash it again.”

Kaa-san is leaning over me, as we look over a big pot that we are washing rice in. Her hands are over mine, soft, and we are dipping them in the cool, starchy water. I’d almost forgotten, in the months my mother avoided me, the soothing feeling of her holding me, and of her hair skimming my skin.

Kaa-san loves me again. It’s been weeks since the collapse and since then mother has scarcely left my side. It seems whereas she had been having a crisis these past weeks, she now couldn’t get enough of me. I woke up to her hungry, mournful stares as she watched me sleep – when I wasn’t waking to coughing fits.

Either served their purpose to remind me that I was running out of time.

“Always, always wash your rice, Heiwa.” She gently reminded me. “People who don’t are lazy and don’t care about what they eat. Don’t be like them – rice has rules.” I nod, letting my fingers pass over the hard grains obscured by cloudy water.

I can feel her smile, mouth pressing against my hair.

“My parents helped with the rice farming, did you know that, Heiwa? My village had two crops – soy and rice. You need water for rice and we had plenty of it.”

My mother pushes her hands deeper into the rice pot, and I saw her fingers working the rice, the water clouding incessantly as she disturbs the tightly packed grains.

“When I was your age, I hated rice. It was all there was at home – rice in the kitchen, rice outside, rice for miles. My parents’ parents grew rice, my parents did, and I was to grow it, too.” I use my fingers to help mother comb for bad grains, though her fingers, more practiced than mine, pick them up with ease, flinging off-color grains from the pot.

“Don’t get me wrong. I was never very adventurous. I just found it boring – if the war hadn’t happened…” Kaa-san fell silent, and I felt her heave a sigh. “No, I was never the adventurous one. My otouto, however…”

I almost jump. My mother has never mentioned a brother to me, ever. Slowly, I remove my hands from the pot, careful not to let any grains stick to me, and look up at her with a raised eyebrow. She chuckled despite the weary look in her eyes.

“Yes, Heiwa. At one time, I had a little brother named Kazuo. He was…sick. Sicker than me, and you can understand why he didn’t last…during the war.” She says, lifting the pot before tipping it while placing a net over it so the rice didn’t spill out. The water is poured out the window, turning the dusty autumn ground into mud. I reach for another bucket of clean well-water.

“Last round before we cook it.” Mother sighs out, taking the bucket I was trying to hold up and pouring it in. I step back, wiping my hands on a cloth before going to sit down and watch my mother cook. She seems content to talk to me, and I listen on, eager for any details of her life.

“Did you know, Heiwa, that sickness doesn’t mean one lacks the will to live? Humans… we can take lots of pain before we’re willin’ to call it quits. My lil’ brother…he was full of life. Now he wanted to see a world beyond the rice fields, beyond the lake shore. Me? I didn’t think about much more than knowing rice was tiring work.”

It’s almost as if you can’t tell she’s sick. Watching her back, her lugging things – her lithe, always sinewy frame, now wracked with disease, still manages to have strength in it. Is this what she’s telling me? That even someone fated to die soon, they wish to live?

I close my eyes and remind myself of what I’ve heard for the past month – a fact I have yet to really accept.

Kaa-san will be dead soon.

Kaa-san is going to die.

We don’t have money for a doctor, and Kaa-san doesn’t want another trip after what happened in the last one. The doctor didn’t give her much hope – if the medicine hasn’t worked by now, then she might not see the next summer.

“That would have been your name if you had been born a boy,” Suiren adds, hands deep in the rice pot once more. “Kazuo. See my parents had the kanji for ‘first son’ used for him – they had such hopes for him when he was born, the first son, before he turned out to be too weak to even hold up a spade. We always joked the kanji for ‘peaceful man’, another way of spelling Kazuo, would have fit him better. And then I heard that obnoxious jingle on radio, for Heiwa Tea, and it came to me. A way of…remembering him.”

I lean on the edge of the table, pondering her words. Perhaps mother had been right in a way, to name me after her brother – I suppose there was some justice in naming a very sickly daughter after a weak and ill brother.

“For world peace, there’s the spirits. For peace in a cup, there’s Heiwa Tea.” Mother sung out. “I found it funny, but I was drinkin’ so much of the tea that I couldn’t help but memorize it.” Mother hefts the pot up again, draining it of water – I barely noticed as she had so quickly washed it this round. She places it back on the counter and turns back to me, smiling one of her close-mouthed smiles. “You paid attention to what I did, right? A person who can’t make a bowl of rice can’t do anything right, Heiwa.” Soon enough, I heard the sound of our woodstove being started, and watch as my mother puts a pinch of water in the bubbling water.

The door opens and Rei walks in, holding bundles of linen and a roll of some fabric – obviously connected with her work. Kaa-san waves, gesturing the to the pot of washed rice waiting to be added to the bubbling water and Rei’s face, so troubled these days, softens before she glances at me.

“Helpin’ your ma make dinner, Heiwa-chan?” I nod, though I didn’t help that much. Mother smiles again.

“She’s my little helper. And such a good listener – I’ve been tellin’ her stories about the rice farm.” Rei snorts, setting down her load on a chair.

“There ain’t much from what I’d heard.” Rei says, opening pantry doors.

Suiren laughs, nodding. “There never was. Come, Heiwa. You’re better off seeing how I cook rice. Maybe when you’ll grow up you’ll have a house with a rice cooker, but for now…”

Later, as we settle down to our (rather meager) dinner of ochazuke, I realized that there might be more grains of rice in my bowl than days left with her.

* * *

**“I don’t know what to do, about any of this.”** I signed to Kojiro. The was a dust storm outside, and so I found myself trapped in my shishou’s house, listening to the wind and dust clash against the seal-reinforced windows and cause all the things on Kojiro’s walls to shake.

**“I don’t get why this is happening, why Kaa-san is sick, why now.”**

Kojiro set his cup of cocoa (the storm merited more of the stash) down, pulling at his beard as his forehead wrinkles deeply.

“I don’t know what to tell you, kiddo. From what I’ve learned over the years, your ma’s family has a history of illness. Heck, you should know this – congenital aphonia or whatever you have ain’t common in the slightest. As for what you should do, what can you do? Heiwa, you’re five. I know I don’t always treat you like a little kid, but…there are children your age who don’t understand death, can’t even come to terms with it. The fact you even understand that your mom is going…” He trailed off and I took the moment to sip my cocoa before signing back.

**“Just because I understand death doesn’t mean I want her to go.”**

“No one really wants the ones they love to die.” Kojiro mumbles, fingers tracing patterns into the wooden tabletop. “No one wants to be left behind. It’s just a fact of life, and, for people like us, Heiwa-chan, more than others. The hurt you feel now – as you accept that your mom is most likely passin’ away, at some point you’ll be on the other side of that. Being a shinobi isn’t about protectin’ others all the time – we’re death dealers. One day you’ll be the sickness, and on other days you’ll be yourself, watching as those you love die. It….won’t make you feel better, but… I think… despite that fact this will always hurt you, and you’ll always miss Suiren, when it comes time to lose more, you’ll know what it feels like. Even as shinobi… we’re not always prepared. Especially when it comes in waves. If you’re used to losing pieces, losing everything won’t hurt as much.”

**“Like you did.”**

“Yeah… Like I did.”

I glance to the left, where on the fireplace mantle a very faded old photograph of a family of people who look extraordinarily similar are smiling at the camera. I can tell, barely, all have the same shade of hair, and that a young Kojiro is to the side, arm around a young woman with plaited long hair in a very old looking flak jacket. To the side I can see Daichi – half his size, and other people, some couples and even some children. Kojiro was also looking at the photo too, and heaved out a great sigh.

“She was pregnant with Naoki in that picture too. Not showing yet.” He grumbles, reaching for the pot and pouring more hot chocolate into his cup. “That picture’s full of ghosts.”

I lower my eyes to ground. Naoki. Naoki and Yoko, Kojiro’s daughter and wife respectively who perished in the destruction of Uzushiogakure. I could even see a man with extreme resemblance to the young Kojiro, even when most of the people looked so similar in the picture. I pointed at him and Kojiro grimaced.

“My mother, Konohana, was a schoolteacher for the children of Uzushiogakure, and specialized in the history of shinobi. She also had a bad sense of humor and decided to name my elder _brother_ and I after Miyamoto Musashi and Sasaki Kojiro. We never developed a rivalry like our namesakes’, but we did drive her crazy by teaming up and causing trouble. Musashi was one of the first to go. I never had a stomach for politics, but nii-san…”

I nodded, understanding what he meant. The fall of Uzushio sounded very complicated and my brief reading had ended up me stopping due to the sheer complexity of all the factions, both native and the foreign forces involved, but even then I understood how much all of it had hurt the man before me – what seemed the most important bit. Just as Kojiro had said, he’d lost everything.

_‘Ghosts indeed.’_ I thought.

**“But what do I do after she’s gone. What happens? I don’t… How do I live without my mother?”** I ask again, bringing the conversation back to my predicament. The mere thought brought a sinking feeling to my body – as if it was physically resisting the mere thought of a life without her. Kojiro set his cup down and began signing back to me, something he did occasionally to keep his knowledge of SESL sharp.

**“You live, Heiwa. That’s all you can do, live day by day without her. And as for what we’ll do, we’ll see. If you decide that Amegakure is the path you want to pursue, we shall look at it.”**

I lean forward, holding my head up by balancing my elbows on the table as I watch Kojiro’s clumsier and slower signing, before raising my head to look at the storm outside, not showing any signs of lessening. Was it so simple as ‘Move on’? ‘Go to Ame, be a shinobi, just move on from the fact your mother is wasting away every day’? How could it be that? How could I expect to just not see Suiren again?

Something in me wanted to cry, but I pushed it away, thinking that perhaps my tears were better served in that uncertain but painful future. A hand brushed my shoulder, and I looked up to see Kojiro reaching and squeezing my shoulder.

“Whatever happens, Heiwa, don’t forget you still have people. You have Rei. You have me. As long as you remember there’s still someone, it gets easier. And that’s a promise.”

* * *

Fall began to turn into winter, and the ground became drier still, cracked and brittle – as along with it, mother’s condition began to worsen. It was no longer spurts of illness now, she got tired out so easily and began sleeping more and more. Being my mother, the sicker she felt, the more she struggled against it.

And somewhere in mid-November she began working on something for me. A final present.

“I won’t see it, Heiwa-chan.” She sighed out, looking through all the thread in Rei’s kit. “I won’t see your wedding, your coming of age ceremony, nor will I see your _obitoki no gi_. That’s two years away… I wanted to take you to Saboten’s shrine for it, since we didn’t make it for your third birthday, but..” The candles were dim but I could see the fabric Kaa-san had out and it was a far cry from anything I’d ever seen. Once in a while I’d see rich fabrics, colorful with intricate patterns stashed away, though this was rare as Rei rarely had use for them. Back in Saboten I saw people wearing things I’d never seen before, and the rolls of fabric mother had out resembled them.

“Do you know, Heiwa, that in you seventh year you’re allowed to wear your own obi?” Suiren asks, hands quickly darting with a needle back and forth. I feel myself hypnotized just by glancing at them and fight the urge to turn on my Sharingan and record it – record every tiny detail I couldn’t really grasp at once. The length of my mother’s fingers, the sheen of her nails, the way her ever-thinning fingers showed her bony finger bones and knuckles, twisting as she near attacked the fabric with needle and thread.

I nodded, thinking of people talking about their own 3-5-7 ceremonies and how they took place on a certain day in the month of November in a shrine. My mother had not taken me the fall after I turned three, and so it was the seventh I had to look forward to, a day where a young girl can finally wear an obi – a celebration of making it past the perilous parts of childhood since quite often, infants didn’t see their third celebration.

Such was the world I lived in.

Something swelled in my throat as I realized that Kaa-san wouldn’t escort me to my obitoki no gi, as she said. In two years I’d be making the journey to the shrine with Rei and Kojiro, most likely.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and saw that mother had reached over to comfort me.

“Heiwa, you’ll always have this kimono. I just want you to promise you’ll wear it – I’m sure you won’t grow that much in two years.”

I stare down at the soft gold fabric I could see make up part of the obi and nodded.

Mother finished the dress before the year was out.

* * *

“Oh no, don’t tell me there’s another dust storm brewin’…” Rei muttered, bent over the table and frowning over a pile of clothes Kojiro had dropped off this morning (things he needed mended). I drummed my fingers impatiently, sighing at the clouds far off in the distance, marring the rather pretty blue sky early February decided to bless us with. “And I got things to get to today!” She added, shaking her bony fist at the window before looking back at me. “Heiwa, you take care of Kojiro’s stuff – We’re runnin’ low on your mother’s tea, I’ll go check if there’s anythin’ out there before that settles over the Hovel.

I nodded, grasping a needle and shaking my head at the state of Kojiro’s jacket with all its rips and tears, and a button missing. Not very hard work, technically – and Rei was sure to correct and add anything when she got home. I ignored the door slamming and the sound of Rei’s slippers hitting the hard dirt as she ran off as I lost myself in my task, battling with the short stubbiness of my fingers as I tried to mimic both Kaa-san and Rei-oba-chan’s movements and general dexterity.

That was until I heard coughing and shuffling from our room, signaling my mother was awake. I slid off the stool to go peek in and wish her good morning, since she’d been sleeping more and more these days as she became sicker still.

The room was dark when I entered, most of the light blocked by curtains my mother had us draw since it began to bother her. The few beams of light that escaped merely shown a small path to my mother’s futon, where she was trying to sit up, panting and wiping her mouth.

“Heiwa…” She spoke, moving her hair, thin and brittle now, out of her eyes to look at me with them – soft brown now bloodshot and black. A chill ran down my spine – had she suffered another seizure and I had been too engrossed in my work to even notice? It sure looked like it.

I mouthed ‘Kaa-san’ to her as I walked over to touch her knee, cool to my touch as she weakly beckoned me closer to her, waiting till I was sitting on my knees beside her futon to finally speak.

“Heiwa,” She whispered. “I’m tired.”

I nodded in understanding so she went on.

“I’m so…so tired, Heiwa. I…just feel..so… where is Rei?” Her speech was unusually blurry, and my mother, besides looking as if she just went through a shaking fit, also looked unnerved as her eyes darted to the room and around the room, sliding back to me.

I tried my best to sign to her, using the limited signs I knew my mother would know, even in her disoriented state. Surprisingly, she grasped that Rei was out gathering things for her.

“Rei’s out in the field?” She mumbled back to me, her fingers cupping my face closer, though her grip didn’t hurt, in fact it felt as if she was barely touching me. “That’s good… I…It _hurts_ Heiwa…”

I winced, unsure of what to do when Rei was not here. Kaa-san wasn’t in good shape, obviously. She’d been in pain before, but she was never…so not there…

Suiren sighed, letting go of me before looking at the curtains obscuring our view of the Hovel and all the region we could see.

“She’ll be a while I guess… I should bare it, shouldn’t I? This pain, this tiredness – the spirits are prolonging it…. But I should be strong, shouldn’t I, Heiwa-chan?”

“Strong for you?” She looked back at me, but I felt as if she wasn’t seeing me as she did so.

“Heiwa-chan…will you be strong for me?”

I nodded immediately despite my confusion and her hand was back, pulling me gently towards her. Part of me wondered if this was the moment I’d been waiting for, a moment alone where she’d finally talk about him. About my father. About Itachi. 

“I need you to do something…I had to do it too, you know, and it… I had to, Heiwa-chan, and if you love me, you do it too.” Kaa-san’s words perplexed me, and the chills I got entering the room came back, rolling down my spine and causing goosebumps over me, even though the room wasn’t all that cold. Mother smelt strongly of sickness, of stale unwashed bodies and it made me want to flinch back from her as she drew me closer.

“You’re sweet, Heiwa. Just like Kazuo…but not really like him. He couldn’t last, Heiwa, he wouldn’t have… So, I had to, it was…better that way. If he had lived, we would have both died. Those damned shinobi – Suna, Ame, or Konoha, who cares – we’d both be dead. He even smiled, you know, Heiwa-chan? As he died? It was better…”

“Better that I did it. Merciful, even, right, Heiwa? Life isn’t meant to be lived like this… I waited till he was asleep, Heiwa, I waited until otouto was finally asleep so he wasn’t in pain as he went.”

It felt as if I had the breath knocked out of me.

_Brother-killer._

I wanted to flee, even if my feet refused to move.

“That’s why you should be strong too, Heiwa. Strong enough to do what I did – don’t you love me? I loved him, that’s why I did it, so you must… do it now. Before Rei comes.”

No.                                                                                                

No. No. No.

I began shaking my head, finally pulling myself away from her and crawling backward, realizing only a few feet away that my cheeks were wet from tears I hadn’t noticed were falling. Mother looked at me, a hungry, crazed look on her face.

“Heiwa, no!” She shouted, hand outstretched. “Come back – please, please, just have mercy!”

I wouldn’t.

“Please, Heiwa – just listen!” She yelled out again, hand lowering. “If not now, you’ll watch me die. You’ll watch me waste away, die from the pain and the sick but it’ll be weeks, it’ll be months – do you want me to suffer? Do you hate your mother so much that you want to torture me?”

I opened my mouth, wishing I could talk back, wishing there was sound to express what exactly I wanted to tell mother – how this hurt, how of course I loved her, but how could she ask me to do this, how could she even expect me… But my throat was useless, and no sound have ever come out of it, so even now, when I felt like everything was collapsing, there was no way to get through to her. What use did my fingers have, my writings when everything was this fast, this wrong?

She crawled closer, and I felt the top of my head hit the doorknob as I backed up against the door. Everything told me to run into the kitchen, to wait for Rei – she’d sort this out. She’d make Kaa-san…normal again. She’d save us both.

“I’ll do it myself.” My mother spoke up again as I reached for the knob, her voice and flat, devoid of emotion of all a sudden. It was spoken with very little feeling – rare for my mother, and yet it was so matter-of-fact that I believed her immediately.

“I can. It’ll be messy, but I will, Heiwa. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life suffering and if my daughter can’t even give me mercy I’ll do it myself.” My hand lowered and I turned back, sniffling as I met her cold gaze.

“You could do it, Heiwa. You killed those men, don’t you remember? You did it to save me, so why don’t you do it once more?” I shut my eyes, but the images – the first I’ve ever recorded with my eyes, came flooding back as I remembered killing the highway robbers, my only thought being how much I loved her…

How much I wanted her to live.

How much I wanted her happy.

“I’m asking you, Heiwa.” Mother managed to come closer, and stood up, and suddenly I was in a very familiar embrace. If I kept my eyes closed I could pretend it was any other day and Kaa-san was just hugging me out of love.

“Heiwa, please.” She whispered once more, her fingers running through my hair. “Do it for me. For me, Heiwa.”

I don’t know how, or why, but when I opened my eyes, the Sharingan was active. I didn’t turn it off – it didn’t hit me I’d remember everything. I even ignored the usual exhilaration I tended to get from using it, so focused I was. Despite everything being crystal clear now, recollecting many years in the future, the actual moment felt fuzzy – warmth and my pounding heart as my mother dragged me down to her futon in her arms. The smell didn’t reach me, only the feeling of being enveloped in my mother’s sheets and her limbs, as I had many times before. She even hummed an off-tune lullaby she usually did when I had trouble sleeping.

Just…another day.

My eyes felt hot as I finally made eye contact, and Kaa-san’s face relaxed instantly. I felt dizzy, instantly action but somehow my mother had pressed a pillow into my hands before laying down, staring at me blankly, the haze in her eyes somehow managing to contain a speck of something – fondness? I didn’t know.

It was quick – pressing the pillow to her. I barely realized I was doing it until well after she stopped twitching and convulsing under me. It was only after I removed the pillow and looked at her face (for she was wearing a wide, open smile exposing all her teeth) that I understood what I just did.

My cheek was wet again – but it wasn’t tears. My eyes began to sting unbearably, still burning hot and I tried to shut the power off but all I did was hurtle into darkness.

They say they found me like that; eyes bleeding as I sat vigil over Suiren’s corpse. But I knew not, for my head was somewhere else, somewhere beyond the stars and skies.

For once, I heard no static.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is very concerned about Heiwa and any 'eye-powers' she might gain and over-powered characters in general, let me soothe you with the fact I'm not a very benevolent writer.
> 
> Thank you for reading, let me know your thoughts if you please and see you next time.


End file.
